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j LIBRARY OP CONGRESS.! 

.#<JM> |o ra ri 5 T,t| [ o I 

I UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, f 




r,740 The Matterhorn: Cloud-Banner at Sunrise. 

See page 58. 




OE, 



KNOWLEDGE BY TEATEL. 



By Rev. HENRY W^ WARREN. 



"Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." 



Jhree Jllustrations. 



nut*- 



NEW YORK: 

NELSON & PHILLIPS. 

CINCINNATI : HITCHCOCK & WALDEN. 
1874. 



THE LIBRARY 
Or CONGRESS 

WASHINGTr-v 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by 

NELSON & PHILLIPS, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 






CONTENTS. 



Page 

I. Preliminary Word 7 

II. One Hundred and Fifty Feet Under 

Water 10 

III. A Mile and a Quarter Above Boston 16 

IV. Half a Mile Under Ground 22 

V. Three Miles Above the Earth 32 

VI. Paris and France 46 

VII. The Heart of the Alps 53 

VIII. The Mediterranean Sea in the Alps 59 

IX. A Pre-Historic Glacier 66 

X. A Climb to Thirteen Thousand Six Hun- 
dred and Eighty-five Feet Above the 

Sea 72 

XI. How to Make a Mountain 79 

XII. A German Portfolio 86 

XIII. Strasburg Cathedral 102 

XIV. Under a Salt Mountain 109 

XV. Over the Splugen 117 

XVI. Adlesberg Cavern. 127 

XVII. Alp Life 132 

XVIII. Venerable Venice 140 

XIX. Milan Cathedral 146 

XX. Hung Yesterday — Crowned To-day 152 



6 Contents. 

Page 

XXI. Amusements of Royalty 161 

XXII. Education by Travel 166 

XXIII. The Churches of Rome 174 

XXIV. Pontifical Nepotism 184 

XXV. Underground Rome 191 

XXVI. Expression by Art 202 

XXVII. Putting a Volcano Under Foot 215 

XXVIII. Possibilities and Actualities of Athens. 223 

XXIX. Egypt 281 

XXX. First Impressions of Palestine 238 

XXXI. Familiar Strangeness 246 

XXXII. A Sham Pentecost 251 

XXXIII. Gropings Under Jerusalem 260 

XXXIV. How We Get About the Holy Land. . . 266 
XXXV. Pilgrims 273 

XXXVI. Human Nature 281 

XXXVII. Our Last Ride in Syria 291 

4-* 



$Uu%ixKixart8. 



The Matterhorn : Cloud Banner at Sunrise 2 

Interior of a Salt Mine : The Slide 111 

The Old Pilgrim 279 



I. 

PRELIMINARY WORD: 

tHAVE a small collection of dried flowers 
plucked from here and there : a primrose 
from a river's brim, a daisy from an English 
meadow, heather that made the Scottish highlands 
blush, forget-me-nots that cried out to me from 
the edge of the snow on the Alps, " Take me to your 
warm hands and heart," a blood-root from the old 
Coliseum, a rose from the plain of Sharon, a lily 
of the valley, a star of Bethlehem, a passion-flow- 
er from Gethsemane. But I have by no means 
a perfect herbarium of the flora of all these 
lands. 

I have leaves from the graves of Mrs. Browning, 
Shelley, Keats, Wesley, Scott, etc. ; living ivy from 
the place of Shakspeare's birth, fir from the giants 
of California, cedar from Lebanon, thorns from 
Jericho, terebinth from Hebron, olive from Olivet. 
But I have by no means a perfect museum of all 
the trees of the wood. 

I have sand from the Lybian deserts, stones that 



8 Sights and Insights. 

seem to tremble yet with the thunder of the cataracts 
they came from, others that almost burn my fingers 
now as I remember when I first wrenched them 
off the burning lava, granite from the primal 
Alps, crystals from Adelsberg and Mars' Hill; 
marbles from Pentelicus, Carrara, the Acropolis, 
and buried Pompeii ; stones, with imbedded shells, 
from the Great Pyramid ; stones that yet taste of 
the Dead Sea, from whose depths I took them ; 
stones that shot down with meteor light and swift- 
ness from the sky. But I have by no means a 
perfect cabinet of, the mineralogy of all these 
countries of earth and beyond. 

And I have some pictures, not panoramas, of 
billow and sky, mountain and valley ; thoughts, 
written as opportunity offered, of many places; 
memories of golden mornings, Elysian days, and 
perfect eves ; visions of the time when God took 
up the isles as a very little thing, and the hills 
skipped after him like lambs, and the mountains 
like rams ; inspirations that come from places 
where men counted the truth dearer than life, and 
places where Jesus counted all worlds less than 
his word, and human souls dearer than life. But 
I have by no means written down all the connect- 
ing links of time and place. I have attempted no 
complete geography or universal history. 



Preliminary Word. 9 

I cannot show you my flowers that give me 
" thoughts too deep for tears," nor my " fir-tree, 
pine-tree, and box together that beautify the place 
of my sanctuary," nor my precious stones that 
have treasured and emit more light than diamonds ; 
but I can give you some of my thoughts, pictures, 
memories, and visions. And I will. Here they are. 
If they give you a tithe of the joy they have given me, 
your sum of happiness will be sensibly increased. 

The first thought of putting these wandering 
waifs into a book was suggested by my friend 
Bradford K. Peirce, D.D., of Boston. And I put 
his name here, on what shall be pillar or pillory to 
him, according as the event shall justify or con- 
demn his suggestion. 

I accepted his suggestion, because I hoped to 
offer to the public reading something better than 
the flood of fiction, that weakens attention, makes 
memory a sieve, sets up false standards of life, 
and raises a fearful head of emotional steam, with 
no other result than to strain the boiler. 

H. W. W. 




II. 



ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY FEET UNDER 
WATER. 

N American gentleman once earnestly sought 
an introduction to Lord Byron. The dis- 
tinguished poet, anxious to ascertain 
whether the applicant was worthy of the honor, 
asked if he had ever been to Niagara. He was 
informed that he had not. Then said he, " I wont 
see him. A man who travels into foreign lands 
without having seen the grandest spectacle in the 
universe in his own country is no man for me to 
know." 

That we may meet with no such rebuffs in our 
later wanderings, we will first see " the grandest 
spectacle in the universe," by going behind the 
sheet of descending water at Niagara. 

The preparation for this descent consists in 
doffing your accustomed apparel and donning 
what is warranted to wash, and colors warranted 
not to run — a very necessary color for the uniform 
of an army — namely, a flannel shirt, with a hood, 
drawers, and felt moccasins. Then you wind 
down narrow stairs, till your ideas, and possibly 



One Hundred Fifty Feet Under Water. 1 1 

temper, are inextricably snarled. You walk along 
a couple of hundred feet under crags that project 
far over your head, bristling with innumerable 
loose splinters, and you come to the Cave of the 
Winds. 

This Cave of the Winds is behind the volume 
of water that plunges down between Luna and 
Goat Islands, on the American side. A damp 
merman emerges from a hut in the mist to take 
charge of us. His looks are indicative of his ex- 
perience, and prophetic of ours. Darwin would 
find in him a proof of his theory of " natural selec- 
tion," for he has selected every natural feature 
that will shed • water. The only parting in his 
hair is a point on the summit. Thence it goes 
down every-where. His eyebrows are projecting 
eaves. His nose almost induces our own to 
trickle. His mustache could not be waxed into 
an imperial ; it thatches his mouth. Shoulders 
slope at the sides, and bow forward. Elbows 
never take a right angle, but arms hang straight 
down, and fingers stand wide apart, every one 
ever ready to drip, never r-eady to clutch. A rude 
wooden staircase goes down beside, I might as 
well say in, the descending torrent, till the place is 
reached where the falling water strikes bottom. 

We then take to the narrow slippery rocks be- 



1 2 Sights and Insights, 

hind the cataract. Here the thunderings of many- 
waters are indescribable. A man's yell is no 
more heard than a child's whisper. We think of 
" God on high, mightier than the noise of many- 
waters." With what terror can his voice confound 
the guilty ! What miserable limits has sense ! 
God can ,hear all this, to us monstrous diapason, 
and yet never miss a note of a bird-song on the 
brink above. And yet we are dinned, dazed, and 
confounded by the roll of one note of his seon- 
long anthem, before it is time to change it for an- 
other. Ah, well ! The chief thing about man is 
his room to grow. 

Besides the noise, the chief thing In the cave is 
that from which it takes its name — wind. It blows 
in your face till you cannot take breath for very 
excess of breath. Midas, who wanted gold ; Tar- 
peia, who asked of the Sabines " what they wore on 
their left hands," as the price of letting them into 
the citadel, and got, not golden bracelets, but an 
avalanche of shields that crushed her, and every 
other mortal, is ready to die of too-muchness. 
The mists dash in your face, and you turn a little 
to feel whole streams polishing off all your cor- 
ners, and making you as guidelike as possible. 

The slippery stone stairs you stand on are not 
over six inches wide. There is nothing to hold to, 



One Hundred Fifty Feet Under Water. 1 3 

and within an arm's reach there is power enough 
to churn you into elemental atoms in five seconds. 
Of the few men who have fallen in there, no trace 
could ever be discovered, though the water falls 
somewhat calmly over other rocks before reaching 
the final level. You begin to wonder why you de- 
fiantly came into this den of death, when the guide 
stops where a little less than whole water comes on 
you, and mutely points upward. Now you see why 
you came. One would fall on his knees as in 
God's very presence, and utter deep anthems of 
praise, too rapt to remember that there is no place 
to kneel, nor opportunity to open his mouth, if the 
guide did not hold him. It seems as if He in 
whose " hand are the deep places " of the sea 
must be pouring that ceaseless flood. Limitless, 
infinite, he only can supply its exhaustless abun- 
dance. It seems light and downy as feathers, whiter 
than snow. An afternoon sun was above it, we 
below, the floods between. What an emblem of 
the soul's whiteness ! Every drop transfused and 
transfigured with excess of light. Measureless 
waters continued to be illuminated with infinity of 
light. Earth has few such pictures, time few 
such experiences, to declare God's abundances of 
grace. 
We pass on, and emerge on the opposite side of 



14 Sights and Insights. 

the sheet from which we entered. We clamber 
over and around rocks as large as small houses, 
fallen from above ; pass over narrow bridges below 
the fall, and again look up to its descending vast- 
ness. Here the mists whirl, and here the sun lib- 
erally casts — not rainbows, but rain-circles about 
our feet — complete circles, ourselves the center of 
each. Science tells us that no two persons see the 
same gorgeous arch of color in the sky. The world 
has been made rich enough in such things to give 
a private special bow to 'each eye. So these rings 
of color I saw were all my special property. No 
one else saw the ones I did. God gave them to 
me. He made me a little like the Son whom John 
saw in heaven — with a rainbow entirely round 
about the throne. When the guide, a little out of 
the noise, said, " There is no other place on earth 
that shows the entire circle," I thought, Well, there 
is in heaven. 

When we had passed the foot of the fall, and 
were ready to ascend the path toward the stairs, a 
little Esquimaux-looking girl, in bedraggled hood, 
frock, and trowsers, said, " Let's go back the way 
we came." Nothing loth, I pointed the guide the 
return route. Among the rocks, rainbows, and 
slippery scrambles below and outside the fall, then 
through the wind, mist, rain, cataracts, and thunder 



One Hundred Fifty Feet Under Water. 1 5 

behind the falls, and so climbed to our accustomed 
sphere. 

If it takes a surgical operation to get a joke 
into or out of the head of a Scotchman, it no 
doubt takes all Niagara to get some conceptions 
into the heart of an American. But the grand 
conception is worth keeping stupendous Niagara 
pouring through all the centuries. 

Once out of the roar, and lingering round the 
miles of falling water that rushed in rapids, fell in 
wide cataracts, and shook the earth with its might, 
I could not but ask, " Whence comes all this mighty 
torrent? What infinite reservoirs can keep up 
this supply century after century? " And the 
Bible made me answer, " All the rivers run into 
the sea, yet the sea is not full ; unto the place 
from whence the rivers come, thither they return, 
to go again." And science pointed far off to the 
distant Atlantic and Pacific, and showed me the 
mighty sunbeam lifting the mists from the ocean, 
and bringing them hundreds of miles unto the 
place whence these floods come, and pouring them 
out to go again. Then I saw that Niagara poured 
ceaselessly, and the wide Mississippi flowed from 
the mountains to the sea, because the sunshine 
carried through the upper air as mighty rivers 
from the sea to the mountains. 



III. 

ONE MILE AND A QUARTER ABOVE BOSTON. 

l HAT looks a little boastful. It is hard to 
get ahead of or above Boston. In the mat- 
ter of elevation I have done it. In the mat- 
ter of temperature, Boston is above me. The 
thermometer stood this A. M. (September i) at 
twenty-six degrees. The wind blew sixty miles 
an hour. The snow and hail were three inches 
deep. You scorched people may be glad to know 
where such temperature may be found, and how 
to get there. 

Take the Eastern Railroad for North Conway, 
and thence to the top of Mount Washington, and 
you find it. The Glen is twenty-four miles from 
North Conway. From the Glen to the top of 
Mount Washington is three miles in a straight line. 
A fine carriage-road has been constructed that 
winds about for eight miles, rising one foot in 
eight. That road cost sixty thousand dollars, 
and pays three per cent, on its capital stock. 
It takes nearly four hours and quite five dol- 
lars to ride up. To walk takes the same time 



One Mile and a Quarter Above Boston. 17 

and much muscle. The heavens had been 
filled with sailing islands of pure white clouds all 
day when I commenced the ascent. The top of 
the mountain had not been clear of mist and tem- 
pest for more than two days. Hoping to see the 
mountain in all the grandeur of a storm, we pushed 
on. For the first four miles the view was glorious. 
The pictures widened at every step. The dark 
shadows hurried over a brilliant landscape. Dark 
forest, green meadows, sparkling waters, flying 
shadows, terrible precipices, inaccessible heights, 
and a canopy of driven mist, through which the 
setting sun threw a gorgeous double rainbow that 
spanned the whole east, were elements that com- 
bined in grandeur. It was no puny picture of 
dull colors, set on a narrow wall in a tinsel frame, 
soon to be forgotten, but one of living colors, like 
those around the throne, full of mighty motion, 
and one that will live in memory as long as life. 

We could see where the fierce gale struck the 
cold mountain head, had its moisture condensed 
into mist, its clear air turned to cloud, and came 
pouring over the crest and down the opposite side 
in Niagaras of cloud. Then the warmer air of 
the lower regions absorbed the moisture, and the 
surging torrent vanished in mid-air. That was a real 
Staubach of more than one thousand feet plunge, 



1 8 Sights and Insights. 

or a two-foot stream. It poured out of the skies 
and spread over a score of miles. Of course the 
mountain could be vailed as long as winds could 
blow. And we found that winds could blow. 
There was more vivid teaching of the nature of 
clouds, storms, rain, and wind in one hour, than 
all I had ever read from books. 

We rolled up the curtains and top of the wagon, 
and began to scud under bare poles. We lashed 
our hats to windward with strong cords, and shiv- 
ered in the wind. It did seem that it would take 
us up like a little thing and hurl us over the cliff. 

We entered into a cloud at the sixth mile. Here 
the cold changed the mist to sleet. It turned the 
driver's whip into a pole, and cased the frame 
work for the wagon covering in ice. After being 
an hour in the mist we came to the top. We were 
cordially welcomed by a company some of whom 
had waited three days, at six dollars at day, for a 
glimpse of the lower world. " Misery loves com- 
pany," they said. But I had not taken that pains 
to climb up to misery. I had come for ecstasy. 
Before nine o'clock we were engaged in a lively 
game of snowball in the house. 

Every man and woman took all their traps of 
coats, shawls, etc., with them to bed, for the cold 
was fearful, and it was driven at us by such a gale 



One Mile and a Quarter Above Boston. 19 

as seldom blows below. The rooms are seven by 
nine. The roof slopes within two feet of the 
floor and of the opposite wall ; space rather lim- 
ited when occupied by two. Still there is no 
trouble about ventilation. You cannot raise a 
window, for the two panes that admit light are set 
as a skylight in the roof. But that force of wind 
will go through pine boards almost as easily as 
through muslin. 

About two o'clock the whole company was awak- 
ened by masses of ice falling on the roof from 
the chimney guys. This had accumulated to a 
diameter of six inches, and the wind shook it 
down on the roof. Some thought it thunder. It 
seemed as if every deposit would come through. 
It did break one skylight, and tumbled into the 
room. Timid women screamed ; frightened men 
got up, tramped round the house, and it was near 
daylight before quiet was restored. 

The long dark night at length wore wearily away. 
'Mid crashing ice and howling blast 
We hailed the dawn of day. 

And we howled when it haled its crashing ice on 
us. No visible sunrise for us that day. Our tele- 
graph wires were three inches in diameter except 
where broken down. We were utterly cut off from 

the rest of the world. Whether there was any rest 

2 



20 Sights and Insights. 

beside our four or five rods we could not tell. 
Perhaps the delayed comet had sundered, and 
hurled us into a frozen limbo. 

The beautiful frost-work covered all the sur- 
face. In favorable localities it formed in separate 
masses like a fan, at the base an inch or two 
square ; then spreading in most delicate crystals, 
one mass overlying another like feathers. It grew 
toward the wind, and the furious blast, driving 
each particle of frozen mist at twice the velocity 
of a locomotive to its place on the mass already 
formed, did not prevent its taking its place in the 
most delicate crystallizations, and in such forms of 
beauty as seem inconsistent with such force. The 
sharp, pricking hail soon drove us from a contem- 
plation of its beauties to a contemplation of the 
beauties and utilities of great roaring fires, where 
we rubbed our chilled fingers, held them in our 
hair, and felt them ache after the old-time manner 
of school boys in winter. 

Meanwhile there was bright sunshine, a moder- 
ate breeze temperature and clear air half a mile 
below us. These fair promises beguiled a com- 
pany of a gentleman, three ladies, and four chil- 
dren, including a baby, to come up. The carriage 
set them down about ten rods from the house. 
They attempted to make their way to its shelter. 



One Mile and a Quarter Above Boston. 2 1 

But the women could scarcely stand in the fierce 
wind, and one by one the whole party, except the 
driver, sank down in the snow, utterly exhausted. 
And but for help that whole party must have per- 
ished in the snow and tempest, within half a mile 
of sunny fields, and within sight of shelter. 

Hereafter, when the sun scorches, and the fe- 
vered blood gets as " high as ninety," I shall re- 
member with refreshment that it is only a mile up 
to freezing. And a sense of that canopy of com- 
fort will temper the temporary and narrow oven in 
which I bake. 

P. S. — I had opportunity to try it very soon, for 
only three days after the thermometer indicated 
ninety-eight degrees in my room. The success of 
the experiment need not be detailed. 



IV. 

HALF A MILE UNDER GROUND. 

HERE is a famous institution not very far 
from Philadelphia called the "Switchback." 
It is not pleasantly suggestive to men whose 
memories are yet young ; but as it is liberally pla- 
carded as being in the " Switzerland of America," 
we must certainly visit it before visiting the Switz- 
erland of Europe. 

It is situated near Mauch Chunk — which is not 
a misspell for mock, but for much. Said Mauch 
Chunk is the outlet of one of our greatest coal de- 
posits. It lies, or rather stands, in a deep valley, 
scarcely six hundred feet wide, between precipi- 
tous mountains. But into that narrow place nature 
has crowded a river, and man has crowded a canal, 
a road, two rows of houses, and two railroads. 

The coal-beds lie in the slopes of the mountains, 
ten or fifteen miles distant. They first made a 
railroad, and let the coal-cars slide down hill, and 
empty their burdens of black diamonds into the 
canal boats at Mauch Chunk. The cars were then 
drawn back by mules, which, in turn, enjoyed the 



Half a Mile Under Ground. 23 

ride down again. But a bright genius conceived 
the idea of letting gravity — not his, but the earth's 
— take the cars back also. To accomplish this 
the cars are first drawn up an incline of two thou- 
sand three hundred and forty-one feet to the 
top of Mount Pisgah, and nearly one thousand feet 
above the level of the river. A road was then 
constructed along the mountain side, with suffi- 
cient descent to allow the cars to run ten miles, 
when they are drawn up a new incline and sent 
on another whirl. We come to the foot of the 
plane that was not a plain. Two ribbons of steel, 
about five inches wide, lie between the rails on 
rollers. They begin to be drawn up the mountain. 
There emerges out of the ground behind us two 
enormous chucks on trucks, which butt against 
our train of four cars behind, and begin to drive 
us up the slope. It requires hard holding to 
prevent being piled into a heap in the lower end 
of the car. Up we go, lifted pulse by pulse, above 
the wild landscape. Some that have gone up with 
covered face lift their hands and join in the cry, 
" Beautiful, beautiful ! " Pisgah is well named. We 
have not climbed where Moses stood, but if he 
had any more enrapturing vision it must be be- 
cause the cloudy vail of sense was opened, and he 
saw the world beyond. 



24 Sights and Insights. 

Then we commence to dash along the mountain 

side, drawn — just think of it — by an engine 4,000 

miles away. Gravitation is hurling us along that 

descent, over trestles, around bluffs, through woods, 

at a fearful — no, joyful rate. Our party makes itself 

the figure-head of the flying train ; sits on the front 

platform, passes hats and bonnets to the keepers 

within, and without cinders or dust, with hair 

flying in the wind, with shouts startling the. echoes, 

wild beasts around, and tame propriety behind, we 

slide down hill on a rail, in the good old style of 

years ago, for ten miles. 

Bless me, this is pleasant, 
Riding on a rail. 

Here we find another slope, with an engine at 
the top to draw up sleds and sliders. Here is a 
train of half a dozen loaded cars, under control of 
a single man, starting by the power of gravity for 
Mauch Chunk. It seems fearful to commit such a 
load to a single man. Only a few times have the 
breaks become disarranged. Then the train flies. 
There is one place where' the track is perfectly 
straight and even for five miles. Almost any speed 
can be made there. But when it comes to the least 
curve or inequality the train jumps the track, and 
cars, coal, and man are all in one black burial blent. 
At the top of this second plane is a burning mine. 



Half a Mile Under Ground. 25 

It took fire fifteen years ago, and they have never 
been able to put it out. It smolders away year 
after year, sending up its thin wreaths of smoke, 
and sometimes fire ; and occasionally down slumps 
an acre of mountain top, whose foundation had 
been eaten away. It looks singularly like the 
crater of a volcano. It is one. 

Here we dash off at right angles from our previ- 
ous route, compass a valley, and visit a coal-breaker. 
It is a tall building, high as a ten-story house. 
Into the top of this come the cars from the mine, 
emptying hundreds of tons of coal into a vast hop- 
per. Huge pieces, large as a bushel basket, are 
caught between the rollers, and crushed into egg, 
furnace, and nut with a rapidity that is truly aw- 
ful, especially, as is sometimes the case, when a 
blundering workman slips in among them, and is 
made mince meat of in three seconds. From the 
breaker the coal slides into two perforated cylin- 
ders, slightly inclined. The first section of the 
cylinders is pierced with small holes, that as it re- 
volves, lets out the dust ; in the second section 
there are larger holes that let out the nut; and 
thus all is assorted into as many sizes as desired. 
Every piece of coal now slides down a shoot, by 
a little army of boys, who pick out all the shale, 
and the coal falls into its appropriate bin below. 



26 Sights and Insights. 

(I have had coal that looked as if the boys took 
frequent play-spells.) The dust is raised to the top 
of the building, and carried off to the growing 
mountain of coal, pure indeed, but too small to use. 
The cars pass the bins. The gates are hoisted, 
the car loaded in half a minute. The whistle 
sounds " off breaks," and the coal is on the way to 
your bin. The record of yesterday shows one 
hundred and forty-one cars forwarded — seven hun- 
dred tons. May your winter be warm ! 

Let us now go where it comes from. Morning 
dawned brightly — a matter of indifference to us for 
once, for the light of day would be of little aid to 
us among the black diamonds. Other circum- 
stances are equally auspicious ; one of which is 
we have borrowed some clothes, and are not afraid 
of hurting them. Another is that we have a first- 
class geologist in the party, who knows all about 
how this world has been put together, and will give 
us something more than the experience of being 
"put down in a dark hole and covered all over 
with charcoal." 

Here is a hole in the ground. It runs down a 
steep incline, eight hundred feet. We jump into a 
car, and we barely avoid being piled top of and un- 
der each other at the lower end, by desperate cling- 
ing. The light of day fades behind us. The light of 



Half a Mile Under Ground. 27 

four little lamps, constructed to smoke rather than 
illuminate, is a poor substitute. We feel every pulse 
of the engine as it drops us little by little into the 
abyss. Our walls are heavy logs set on end ; our 
roof ditto, laid horizontally across. We reach the 
bottom, where a dozen Cyclopean gnomes, with a 
lamp at their foreheads, are whirling cars of coal 
hither and thither, with an apparent recklessness 
that makes one constantly expect that one will 
burst out of the darkness and smite him. Here is 
the pump that relieves these miles of underground 
galleries of water. It must be lifted seven hun- 
dred feet. Such a column of water weighs about 
three hundred pounds to the square inch. But steam 
will lift it. Coal clears out the water, draws itself 
up, and carries itself to market. Properly handled, 
coal is never lifted but once by human muscle, in 
its journey from the bowels of the earth, through 
breaker, car, and cart, to your door. We say to a 
heap of it, " Get up and move a thousand miles ; 
and, since you are going, take a thousand men, 
or tons of goods, along with you." And it obeys. 
We commenced to file along one of the galleries. 
One of the party sat down rather suddenly on a 
shelving pile of coal, and filled both his boots with 
water. The drops that dripped from above did 
not affect him after that Frequently a donkey 



28 Sights arid Insights. 

starts out of the darkness, drawing cars of coal. 
You " respect the burden " very highly, and cling 
to the wall as to an old and clean friend, which it 
certainly is not. The gallery is about ten feet 
wide and seven high, in most places heavily tim- 
bered. From this gallery openings are worked on 
either side, say twenty feet wide, with a pillar fif- 
teen feet wide between them to support the roof. 
The gallery runs out half a mile, turns round, with 
similar openings on either side, and returns to the 
shaft. A strong current of air is drawn, by means of 
a large fan at the surface, around the entire circuit. 
This enormous deposit of coal is two hundred and 
seventy-five feet thick. It is worked at present 
with two tiers of galleries, one above the other. 
That single deposit seems exhaustless ; but when 
we remember that seventeen millions of tons 
have been mined in a single year, the product of 
any single mine seems like a particle of dust in the 
balance. 

Even in these depths of the earth life cannot be 
repressed. Long fungoid growths, in the shape of 
pendent cockades, three feet long and three inches 
in diameter, sometimes hang from the decaying logs. 
They are white as drifted snow, translucent to 
our lights, and swing like things of life in the 
current of air. 



Half a Mile Under Ground. 29 

Just after the coal is freshly taken away from the 
heading, the remaining coal, not supporting the 
pressure of the mountain, is often ejected with 
great force from the freshly exposed wall. All 
miners are deeply scarred in the face by these minie-- 
like missiles. Sometimes a piece six inches in 
diameter will leap from its place, and pulverize it- 
self on the other side. We required but little per- 
suasion to turn back from the extreme front, and 
soon regained our native air. 

It is well that none of us were called to pulpit or 
platform as we emerged, or our auditors might 
have manifested a justifiable prejudice against 
color. Black as we were, it was a red-letter day 
to us all. 

We went to the pile of refuse, and gathered 
some excellent specimens of pressed ferns and 
leaves from the shale rock that overlies and under- 
lies the coal. We found perfect specimens of the 
most delicate ferns, pressed as perfectly between 
layers of rock as we could do it ourselves ; also 
wood and bark of trees turned into stone. It is sup- 
posed that these ferns, and other deciduous plants, 
formerly grew in great quantities along the reedy 
shores of the shallow sea ; and when a bed of 
vegetable matter had accumulated in vast thick- 
ness it was sunk far beneath the sea, covered over 



30 Sights and Insights. 

with sand by the rivers and currents, and this sand 
compacted into a rocky roof for the vegetable 
matter, which was here converted, under vast 
pressure, into coal, and was afterward lifted up in 
the Alleghany Mountains to serve as vast reser- 
voirs of fuel for man. 

When we remember that all woody fiber is made 
by the sun, we see that coal is only condensed 
sunshine ; and that, when we might have supposed 
it was being wasted on a world where no man lived, 
it was really being stored up and preserved for our 
needs to-day. 

We resume our clothes and conveyance, pass 
more mines, are drawn up two more slopes, and 
then commence backsliding toward our starting- 
place. This last is the best of all. Over this 
long, straight, smooth home-stretch our driver lets 
out his horses. The power that swings worlds is 
our team ; two-forty is nothing. Let gravitation 
do her best. Clutch hard on supports. Hold 
your breath close, you cannot catch any more at 

this rate : 

Rapidly as comets run 

To the embraces of the sun, 

Fleeter than the starry brands 

Flung at night by angel hands. 

But there is a sharp curve ahead. Hold in your 
horses, breakman. Ease us down to earth ten- 



Half a Mile Under Ground. 3 1 

derly. Let not such rocket-flying come down like 
a stick. 

I can easily believe the story they tell here of 
a staid old Quaker. He refused to ride till he was 
assured the car should not go faster than he wished. 
On the home stretch he says, " Friend, is this as 
fast as thee can go ? " " O no," says the conduct- 
or, and loosens his break a little. By and by 
Broadbrim says again, " Friend, I do not wish to 
trouble thee, but can't thee go a little faster ? " 
" O yes, if you dare risk it." Directly old con- 
servatism ventures, " Friend, I will not trouble 
thee again, but can't thee go a little faster ? " " Not 
without going to perdition," replied the guardian 
of the train. " Never mind, let her go," shouted 
the aroused old man. But the cool conductor, 
doubtful of the reception, obstinately denied the 
request. 



V. 

THREE MILES ABOVE THE EARTH. 

tHAVE long had an ambition to see the earth 
'from some outside stand-point, to see ourselves 
as angels see us. A new post of observation 
wonderfully changes our ideas. Alexander thought 
himself the greatest of men, and the Thracian brig- 
and a miserable robber. But the Thracian rob- 
ber looked upon him as a stupendous destroyer, 
and himself as a benefactor of the race. So our 
boasted wisdom is stark folly to higher knowledge. 

But how to reach the stand-point is the question. 
I never had the felicity of Pollok's philosopher, 
" Leaving the earth, at will, he soared to heaven." 
I never believed in the corporeal actuality of that 
individual. He must have been an " airy noth- 
ing," and Pollok had not imagination enough to 
body him forth, and give him " a local habitation 
and a name." Well, I have reached a stand-point 
I never occupied before. Do you ask how it 
looks ? Not exactly as I expected, I confess. 

I cannot see the earth at all.' I do not know 
but it has run away, and left me to wander dark- 



Three Miles Above the Earth. 33 

ling in the voids of space forever. I sometimes 
feel as if it had, and I am to be left wandering 
alone. Does one shrink from such a possibility ? 
That depends on one's relation to Him who filleth 
all in all. A man once told me that he at one time 
thought himself to be dying, and the earth seemed 
to shrink away in the far distance to as minute a 
speck as the other planets appear to be. But he, 
taken off the earth, and earth itself dwarfed almost 
to nothing, was happy, because he was with God, 
and at peace with him. If the earth be removed, 
if we ascend up into heaven, or if we dwell in the 
uttermost parts of the sea, God is there. That 
last place is just where I am, the uttermost part 
of the sea ; but while I write the word, I go reel- 
ing down to the depths again. I have done little * 
for the past ten days except to " reel to and fro, 
and stagger like a drunken man," and see people 
trying the feat of turning themselves inside out. 
Nearly every passenger has succeeded to an alarm- 
ing extent. That picture of Munchausen running 
his arm down the throat of a ravening Wolf, and 
then jerking him wrong side out, has been before 
me constantly. I doubt whether some of us know 
which side out we are now. O ! (w)retched men 
that we are, we have had a terrific succession of 
head winds from the hour we left New York. 



34 Sights and Insights. 

Some one suggested that we had a Jonah aboard. 
I submitted that every body seemed to have one 
aboard, and was trying to heave him up. I have 
discovered that man is much more fearfully and 
wonderfully made than I ever imagined. 

I was reminded of the church that bought a 
barrel-organ warranted to play forty tunes, to save 
the expense of an organist. But having finished 
their hymn, on the first Sunday, no one had skill 
enough to stop it. What could be done ! They 
could not sing all day. Besides, they never could 
tell what tune might be ground out next. It had 
to be taken down the aisle, to play its forty tunes 
through out-doors. I also remembered the man 
who got a very perfect wooden leg, warranted to 
go. But having got it started, it walked and 
walked, in spite of all he could do to stop it, till it 
walked the other leg and the rest of the man to 
death. The organ and leg owners must have been 
considerably surprised. 

Equally astonished is a man to find his every 
power of muscle, brain, and mind desert its cus- 
tomary place, and concentrate with fearful power 
in his stomach. A terrible activity is commenced 
there, in defiance of a man's own will. He has no 
control over his barrel-organ. He is being worked 
to death by one of his own members. 



Three Miles Above the Earth. 35 

It is a fearful revelation, that a man's own powers 
may rebel, run riot, and torture him, in defiance of 
his own will, by a mere change of circumstances. 
It is ominously suggestive of the future. 

I wonder that Dante did not represent some of 
his worst enemies as suffering an eternal sea-sick- 
ness. Eternity gets a new significance as these 
almost endless days and morningless nights creep 
slowly on. An exhortation to shun eternal misery 
never had such a significance as it has to-day. 

We have now passed over two thousand miles 
horizontally ; but I have made a calculation that 
the compound pitches, rolls, and lurches, that we 
get every minute, have carried us nearly twice as 
far, in what directions I have not geometry enough 
to say. 

I saw by the pendulum that the ship was taking 
four rolls a minute of thirty degrees each. That 
would put one side of a sixteen-foot room ten feet 
above the other, and pile every movable thing, in- 
cluding people, into the lower corner. Instantly 
reverse the slant, and you have opportunity to see 
which side of the room you like best, without mak- 
ing any effort to move. You begin to see the wis- 
dom of making rooms of state only six feet by four. 
You get very thankful that they are no larger. 

The ship has since rolled to forty degrees. In- 



36 Sights and hisights. 

deed, if one judged by his feelings, he would say it 
rolled to the perpendicular. But feelings are not 
to be depended on in such exigencies. Things 
get wonderfully deranged. Even the drains to the 
wash-bowls reverse their designed directions, and 
spout fountains six feet high, converting the pile of 
your Turkish carpets and your pile of garments 
into an oozy swamp. The human system follows 
the bad example, and adds odors, not of Eden, to 
said swamp. If a man's nose is in any way extra 
sensitive, he had better send it as freight, and not 
reclaim it till he arrives among the daisies and 
blooming hedge-rows of old England. " Is this 
worth one hundred and sixty dollars in gold ? " No 
answers are vouchsafed to civil, much less to badg- 
ering, questions. 

I saw a sea strike our starboard side about amid- 
ships that sounded like the report of a cannon, 
and it went over our highest works with cataracts 
of water. A few years since our captain was swept 
off the bridge, which is twenty-five feet above the 
proper level of the sea, and dashed on the deck. 
The same sea tore a boat from six chains of half- 
inch iron and other fastenings, threw it on the pros- 
trate man, breaking one leg, two arms, three ribs, 
and lots of other bones. 

We have had life lines stretched about our 



Three Miles Above the Earth. 37 

decks much of the time. The men are swept here 
and there, often utterly submerged. It greatly- 
amused me to hear the boatswain yelling to a man 
to get up who was under two feet of water. But 
possibly a voice of that kind could penetrate even 
such obstructions. 

I heartily wished that all who sigh for " a life on 
the ocean wave" could have been one minute 
dashed about by these freezing waters. They 
would quickly sing, " There is no place like home." 
In the roughest of the storm a dozen men were 
kept an hour on the foretop-yard, hurled from side 
to side, standing on a swinging rope, trying to con- 
fine a threshing sail that threatened to knock 
every one into the sea. Soon after the gale split 
our maintop-sail with a sound like thunder. Ropes 
snapped like threads. It took a full two hours for 
twenty men on that reeling yard to get that sail 
down, and a new one in its place. All officers say 
that sailors rapidly deteriorate. I can easily 
believe it, both as individuals and as a class. 
It is a dog's life. Any sensible dog would die in it. 

Let it not be supposed, however, that all is un- 
pleasant; far from it. The very first night out 
had grandeur enough to repay many days of dis- 
comfort. I remained on the upper deck till nearly 
midnight, witnessing a scene so attractive that no « 



38 Sights and Insights. 

driving wind, drenching rain and spray, could 
drive me below. The storm-tossed sea was cov- 
ered with phosphorescence. Every breaking wave 
was like the uncapping of a new volcano. The 
ocean seemed like a vast camp, where ten thousand 
watch-fires burned. But the light being perfectly 
white, it did not seem like the camp-fires of earth, 
but more as if the armies of heaven, riding on the 
whirlwinds, were maneuvering on the undulating 
plain. I looked out to see the form of the Master 
walking on the crested head of the obedient 
waves. I could see him by faith, but he delayed 
his coming. Every few minutes our ship would 
plunge her bows in the waves, and send rivers 
the whole length of the upper deck, pouring tor- 
rents on the lower decks on either side, as the ves- 
sel rolled. After it was too dark to see the water, 
a river of phosphorescent light would pour along, 
backward, forward, and from side to side, as we 
pitched and rolled. This light was not diffused, 
but in little patches, from very small specks to the 
size of a silver half-dime. They looked like a 
river of pearls. What wealth has God ! A little 
fog and sunlight gives the glory of the sunset ; even- 
ing mist, the rainbow ; concentrated smoke, the 
diamond. A river of light flowed along our wake. 
It required but little imagination, in the absence 



Three Miles Above the Earth. 39 

of earth and sky, to people the whole field with 
myriads of active agents. 

A few mornings afterward the Master came to 
me, along the undulating floor of liquid, blazing 
gold, that the rising sun had mingled with fire for 
his coming. Sweetly said he, " Peace." So Christ 
rides all storms of elements, all of civil disorder, 
all of personal affliction. 

Two births have occurred since we left New 
York. Children of the sea are they. This morn- 
ing there was a birth of a different kind. One was 
born from us into the life to come. A soul went 
out to seek its Maker from this strange place. 
How good it is that God compasseth our path 
and our lying down, and is acquainted with all our 
ways. How easy, else, would it be for us to be lost. 

What a wonder is a steamship. This one is 
four hundred and forty two feet long. End it up 
beside Bunker Hill monument, and that ornament 
and pride of Boston's nearest suburb would 
appear but half grown. In its little compass 
it burns seventy tons of coal in a day, giving 
a power equal to three thousand horses. And 
it needs it all. For against the fury of the hurri- 
cane, when a man can hardly keep from being 
blown off the deck, it must push its mighty bulk, 
its vast height of spars, its bewildering amount 



40 Sights and Insights. 

of cordage, among which the wind fairly howls: 
it must drive its way through waves that smite it on 
the forehead with a staggering force ; and it must 
struggle up, when the ocean sends its successive 
lines of soldiers to the charge, and they leap upon 
the deck, and seem to have the mastery. All the 
while it maintains a rate of speed, day and night, 
that few horses could maintain, even for a few 
hours, under the most favoring circumstances. 
That power shut in a small cylinder is mightier 
than wind and wave, because of a higher and less 
material nature. When we fight our battles, let 
us seize on the highest, most spiritual powers, and 
we shall be victors. 

And when the storm is over, and there remains 
no trace of the elemental war, except the long, 
undimpled swell, nothing can exceed the ves- 
sel's beauty of movement as she gently careens 
and bows over the undulating plain that breaks 
into quiet laughter at her touch. There is no 
graceful animal that can be compared to its 
graceful movements. The vessel seems to be in- 
telligent. Her steady pulse that never slackened 
in the storm is not quickened in the calm. There 
is no exultation over its recent victory. Its thrill 
of life has no touch of pride ; it is a display of inner 
power. 



Three Miles Above the Earth. 41 

Our propeller has made its fifty revolutions to 
the minute all the way across the ocean, a million 
in all. That is a power equal to driving the ves- 
sel three hundred and sixty miles a day in smooth 
water, but the storm has sometimes beaten us back 
one hundred and fifty miles a day from the ac- 
complishment of that distance. 

Nearly every thing is done by steam. It hoists 
two or three thousand tons of freight out of the 
capacious hold, and replaces it with as much more 
in two or three days. It pulls on the ropes in 
handling the sails. It gets fifty barrels of ashes 
out of the hold every day, and puts them ready 
for the ash-cart on the back street. It also steers 
the vessel. This is the latest improvement in 
steam navigation. It used to take eight men to 
hold the vessel in a storm. And sometimes it 
would break from their grasp, when Old Neptune 
gave a sudden jerk at the rudder. Here one man 
steers with one hand in calm or storm. Yet he 
exerts a force of twelve tons on the rudder, and 
can deflect it thirty degrees, while eight men could 
not deflect it more than ten degrees when under 
full headway. 

One of the most interesting things about a sea- 
voyage is the source of its guidance. If you steer 
by the direction of its waves, you find they vary. 



42 Sights and Insights. 

If you run toward or away from the wind, you 
may steer to all points of the compass in a day. 
If you follow other vessels, they may lead you 
from your port, and very possibly you cannot keep 
in sight of them for twenty-four hours together. 

Is there any guide whose light no darkness can 
extinguish, whose stability no reeling, plunging, 
staggering motion can shake, and whose reliability 
is not destroyed by every conceivable element of 
uncertainty ? Can any thing stand firm in this 
tossing, and maintain its direction among such 
terrific forces that shift every instant? Surely, 
nothing that is affected by wind or wave. 

But there are etherial forces that are steady in 
storm, quiet in every tumult. These forces travel 
round the earth. The fiercest winds do not blow 
aside their tenuous lines ; the leaping waves can- 
not break their fragility, mountains interposed 
never turn them from their path. Can we lift up 
our hand and feel which way they uninterruptedly 
travel ? Can we fling out our streamers from the 
mast-head and note their direction ? No. Hand 
and streamer are not sensitive to influences so 
etherial. But the fine hammered steel of the 
needle will feel their power and own their sway. 
So when the fog is thick, and the darkness impen- 
etrable, a single little lamp lights up the compass. 



Three Miles Above the Earth. 43 

It is midnight. All lights on board are extin- 
guished. The cavernous hold is blackness. The 
starless vault above is so black that no sky even 
can be seen. But looking at the little light in the 
binnacle that scarcely illuminates a cubic foot of 
space, the helmsman holds his vessel to the point. 
No matter if winds veer, sails flap, waves strike port 
or starboard, she must go straight on, guided through 
instability by the only stable thing they know. 

So, amid the tossings of time, there are stable 
currents of celestial power. Heaved about by 
forces we cannot master, buffeted in the face by 
adversity, hemmed in by darkness we cannot pen- 
etrate, and yet irresistibly driven we know not 
where, there are currents of celestial steadiness. 
The eye sees nought of their direction ; the 
hand cannot feel their passage ; the ear can hear 
no music of their making ; but, steadier than the 
sweep of the stars, they are coursing in every place 
of human need. And when man once gets the 
appropriate part of his nature touched by the 
magnetism of Divine love, and thereafter keeps it 
ready to respond to the influences of the Spirit, 
he is never at a loss for guidance. No matter if 
the sun be obscured, if the stars be hid, if winds 
be adverse, if waves threaten to engulf, the celes- 
tial guidance is secure. 



44 Sights and Insights. 

But our mode of interpreting magnetic currents 
is not perfect. The organism by which we render 
sensible this ethereal influence, that wind never 
varies, and tempest never blows aside, is liable to 
derangement. We render unreliable the true by 
our handling. The heavenly treasure contracts 
some taint from the clay. The compass gets vari- 
ous and variable variations. The iron needed for 
the ship and its machinery brings fluctuations. 
If a ship was built standing on the stocks north 
and south, its needles behave very differently from 
one built east and west. The electrical condition 
is frequently very different after the machinery 
has been put in from what it was before ; also after 
a storm, from its previous condition. So we must 
reach clear beyond the earth. Its ethereal cur- 
rents are not high enough. Its most spiritual is 
too earthy. We go to the stars. Every night 
that polar star, " whose fixed, unvarying constancy 
hath no fellow in the firmament," mounts higher 
in the sky, telling us how far we have crept round 
this floating ball toward the north. Every night 
Orion and the Pleiades swing lower in the south. 
Already the pole star is fifty-one degrees above 
the horizon : eleven degrees higher than it was at 
home. 

Every night stars rise or reach their culmination 



Three Miles Above the Earth. 45 

earlier to tell lis how far we have crept to the east. 
Already our sunrise is three hours earlier than 
yours, if you know when that is. I have always 
been glad that God put us on the outside of this 
earth, instead of within. He thus invites us to 
look up to explore the infinite, and take our guid- 
ance from his high, eternal certainties. Thus we 
are to keep this world under our feet, and stand 
a whole globe higher for our footing. 

A captain once confided his helm to a son of 
Erin, told him to steer straight for a certain star, 
and turned in. He was just being lulled to sleep 
in the soothing arms of Ocean when Pat yelled at 
him, " Say, Misther, come and give me another 
star, I have got clear by that one." Many a poor 
Pat has got "clear by" God's stars. They were 
hung as signal lights, to guide men straight to the 
final and eternal glory. But we turn aside and go 
round the darkness in interlacing curves that only 
wind in a dizzy limbo. 

Our party is steering by the star of Bethlehem 
just now, and hope to come where the young Child 
lay. But we also remember that that star is herald 
of the dawn, so we know that we are steering to- 
ward eternal sunrise. 



VI. 

PARIS AND FRANCE. 

f HARDLY know what to send you, for my 
quiver is as full as a blessed man's house is of 
children. Of one thing I begin to feel sure. 
When the kingdoms of this world shall become the 
kingdoms of our Lord, the last point conquered 
from the present prince of this world will be the 
British Channel. Every time I have touched it 
the prince of the power of the air has come 
down in great wrath. I hope it is because 
he knows his time is short. If any one doubts 
future punishment, let him try present punish- 
ment, and he will cry for mercy hese and here- 
after. 

" When good Americans die they go to Paris," 
says the proverd of the first society. No doubt it 
would satisfy the ambition of many people, who 
call themselves good, to go there after death, pro- 
vided they could have money enough. Whoever 
can be satisfied with the gratification of the senses 
would do well to go to Paris. The tendency of 



Paris and France. 47 

the French mind, that is to say, the Parisian, is to 
delicacy, and the perfection of the minute. There 
are no such astronomical instrument and jewelry 
makers in the world. This trait touches with its 
wand of beauty all that pertains to Parisian life. 
You see it in the white cap of the woman that 
sweeps the streets, in the jeweled crowns of royalty, 
and all that lies between. 

But Paris had no vast conceptions till Napoleon 
arose. All previous attempts at magnificence were 
only aggregations and multiplications of small 
things. He lacked, in a great degree, all the ele- 
ments of the French mind. Yet he thoroughly 
comprehended that mind. Away on a distant cam- 
paign, he received intelligence that the Parisians, 
discontented at his prodigal waste of life, meditated 
revolution against him. " Gild the dome of the 
Hotel des Invalides," wrote he in reply, knowing 
that a new nine days' wonder would prove a com- 
plete preventive of revolution. He gave his vast 
conceptions to the Parisians, and they added that 
touch of perfectness in all the details that is a sign 
of genius. The late Emperor went forward in the 
path his uncle entered, giving the Paris of to-day 
a magnificence of design, and a beautiful com- 
pleteness in detail, that has no rival on the" 
earth. 



48 Sights and Insights. 

They tell you in nearly every place in Europe 
that Napoleon carried their choicest treasures of 
art to Paris. As you see the beauty and magnifi- 
cence of the city you feel half inclined to forgive 
him. And as you remember that most of those 
treasures have been returned to their previous 
owners, you can cherish no hardness toward him 
on that account. But another immense robbery 
has been committed, and no restitution made. 
All France has been plundered to make this one 
city great. 

" Paris is France," says the proud inhabitant of 
the city as he thinks of its influence. " Yes, Paris 
is France," says the observer of both as he sees 
that the country has been drained that the city 
may be full. There is nothing but Paris and its 
tributaries in the nation. It is surprising to see 
how poor and mean the country of a great nation 
can become when its rulers determine to make its 
cities great. In proportion as a government is 
despotic, the rural districts show poverty of build- 
ings, implements, and stock, sparseness and stu- 
pidity of population. I wondered, during a whole 
day's journey in Austria, how a people so indus- 
trious and frugal could be kept so poor. The 
•houses were hovels, and an ordinarily well dressed 
person a great rarity. There was a beggarly des- 



Paris and France. 49 

titution of farm stock. Why was it? It burst 
upon me like a revelation, as I rode through the 
streets of Vienna at night. There was prodigally 
lavished that which would have made the country 
abound in comforts. 

The same was evident in France. Think of 
going five hundred miles through an old country 
like France and find no city of any considerable 
pretension, except the capital. Even villages were 
very scarce, Agricultural implements were very 
primitive. And many evident tokens showed that 
all the thrift and genius had been drafted else- 
where. This is not so in Switzerland or Great 
Britain. You can tell where you pass boundary 
lines between despotic and comparatively free 
countries by the appearance of the country 
itself. 

A great English oculist was asked by old Dr. 
Warren, of Boston, how he attained such wonderful 
skill in operating. " O," said he, " I spoiled a 
whole hat full of eyes in acquiring it." And if you 
ask where Paris gets its brightness, beauty, and 
exuberant life, the answer must be, it spoiled a na- 
tion to hoard it. There is no apparent poverty in 
Paris. I did not see a ragged or dirty person 
(except those carrying coal) in the city, and I went 
into every part. Not once was a hand stretched 



50 Sights and Insights. 

out for charity — a most noticeable circumstance 
to one familiar with Italy. The people all 
seem filled with exuberant life. English people, 
at the close of a day's pleasure-excursion, are 
the most woe-begone looking individuals im- 
aginable. Their pleasures are intensely fatigu- 
ing. Like the man who would have peace if he 
had to fight for it, they make their pleasures pains, 
and work to weariness, trying to get rested. Not 
so the Frenchman. Pleasure is his daily business. 
He goes out like a lark, he comes home as cheer- 
ful as a nightingale. No doubt there is sadness 
and despair enough in the gay capital, but it is not 
apparent. It hides itself in garrets, and, as the 
morning revelations of the Morgue tell us, often in 
the river Seine. 

One thing that helps to account for the absence 
of the lines of care from their faces is their seem- 
ing indifference to what Mrs. Grundy will say. 
They are not fearful that some one will know what 
they do. The women bring their sewing to the 
sidewalk. You can look on their tables as you 
pass their windows and doors. A man will call 
half a dozen acquaintances or strangers about him 
as he discusses his hotel bill with the landlord. 
They have nothing to conceal. Another assistance 
is their exemption from care. The Government 



Paris and France. 5 1 

has charge of them. It carries on vast public 
works that the laborer may have wages, and he 
never builds barricades when he can get better 
pay for building houses. It makes Paris such an 
earthly paradise, that all the pleasure-seekers in 
the world must come to taste its sweets and buy 
its wares. 

But what is the result of such a life ? What is 
the fruitage of sowing to the flesh ? What can the 
diligent cultivation of beauty and exquisite taste 
do for a people ? The results of their recent war 
with Germany give answer. When their bravery 
of brass and flourish of feathers were stripped off 
them they were found livid with fear. They were 
men without hearts. A nation of curs could not 
have taken a whipping more submissively. The 
ruins in Paris give answer. And not only the ruins 
accomplished, covering whole squares in all quar- 
ters of the city, but the far greater ruins designed, 
prepared for, and only frustrated at the last mo- 
ment, give tenfold answer. Education for mere 
pleasure gives men a tiger thirst for blood. It 
glutted itself in Old Rome. And you may stand 
here on a single spot where the blood of twenty- 
three thousand persons has been shed. Not in 
the frenzy of strife, but just for the relish of the 

thing, as the most delectable show of the period, 

4 



52 Sights and Insights. 

made piquant with jokes and theatrical by 
design. 

A man is indictable for high treason to human 
interests who lives at peace with such a system of 
education. 




VII. 

THE HEART OF THE ALPS. 

OW well we remember our first sight of 
Church's " Heart of the Andes." It is a 
picture gorgeous with bright birds and 
leaves. We are charmed with its grace of flowing 
vines. We hear, or fancy we hear, the music of 
its gentle water. The cross by the roadside seems 
in a fitting place with its suggestions of peace. A 
kind of Indian-summer atmosphere sleeps over 
the tropical landscape. And the mountains look 
so far away, I am sure no one ever felt like gird- 
ing up his languid powers to attempt an ascent. 

Very different is the heart of the Alps. The 
waters here roar, dash, leap down fearful preci- 
pices, rave against the hard rocks and tear them 
to pieces. The cold ice faces you on every 
side. Its deep-green color proclaims its fearful 
amount. The worn and crushed rocks tell of 
the power with which it moves. The trees are 
only those hardy kinds that can keep their green 
garments on all the cold winter. And even these, 
especially the fir-trees, make a straight swift push 



54 Sights and Insights. 

for the upper air. Plant it where you will, it points 
straight toward the heaven, as if feeling after the 
light and warmth, and growing up into it regard- 
less of the circumstances from which it springs. 

The mountains are near you. They seem like 
a circle of white-haired giants, watching you all 
the time. 

And the air has no sleepy hue of mistiness. It 
does not drone a quiet tune. It is clear as the 
body of heaven. It shows every object clear-cut 
and near. Then it pipes inspiring marches, puts 
oxygen in your blood, and calls out to you to 
come up and see these sublime mountains face to 
face. 

The characteristic of the Alps is their extreme 
precipitousness. Hence, these twenty splintered 
peaks can stand near together, and have the val- 
ley of Zermatt drop down deep among them. The 
nearest peak is less than five miles from the vil- 
lage. Yet it rises nearly two miles above it. Be- 
sides these mountains, there are those objects of 
unending interest, the Glaciers. Three of the 
most interesting ones in the world come down into 
this little valley. 

There are peculiar facilities for viewing these 
sublime attractions. Nearly every peak may be 
ascended, and the view enjoyed from various 



The Heart of the Alps. 55 

points. Besides this, a kind of a watch-tower has 
been lifted up right in the midst of these tower- 
ing peaks, so that even the feeble and timid may- 
come into this most imposing scenery and expand 
their souls with its grandeur. It seems as if the 
top of a mountain ten miles in diameter had sunk 
down, leaving a dozen craggy mountains split per- 
pendicularly toward Zermatt, or facing the spot 
where the top went down. This fallen-in top still 
retains a relative elevation over the sunken sum- 
mit, and stands up in the low valley. It is called 
the Gorner Grat. 

This inner peak runs up from Zermatt toward 
the east, rising five thousand feet above it, and 
right in the center of the lofty peaks that rise five 
thousand feet higher. A little more . than half 
way up the Gorner Grat the Riffie-house has 
been built. It is an admirable hotel, two thousand 
four hundred feet higher than Mount Washington. 
And although every thing is carried to the first on 
mules or men, and to the second by railroad, yet 
board in the first is only two dollars and a half a 
day, and in the second six dollars. 

No better place could be found for the mount- 
ain-lover. If he would climb, twenty peaks 
beckon him. Would he explore a glacier, he is 
on its border. Would he try crag-work, the 



56 Sights and Insights. 

JR.ifflehorn offers its hitherto unsealed precipices. 
Would he quietly rest, the deep valley, the high 
mountain, and the ever-changing sky, spread out 
their beauties to charm him. 

The first night after my arrival at the Riffle- 
house (July 14) we had, first, thunder and light- 
ning, then terrific wind, two inches of snow, and 
fair weather, all between ten o'clock and four. I 
went out while the sparkling stars yet hung in the 
clear sky. How sorry I felt for the little blue 
violets, and forget-me-nots, that the day before 
bloomed so abundantly as to make one think the 
sky had fallen. I scraped away the snow, and 
there they were, looking as brave as if a snow- 
storm brought only a winter blanket, and was to 
be always welcomed. But I was bound for the 
top of the Gorner Grat to see the sun rise. The 
time of the ascent is one and a half hours. So 
there is not much time on a summer morning to 
loiter among snow-covered flowers. I accom- 
plished the ascent, and stood in a world of white 
to welcome the king of day. I had seen Guido's 
" Gorgeous Aurora " in the Rospigliosi Palace at 
Rome, and thought it unequaled. But one real 
aurora surpasses any paint as much as rainbows 
outshine dyestuffs. First, the Matterhorn, and the 
peaks north of it, caught a faint crimson glow. 



The Heart of the Alps. 57 

They were no longer cold snow mountains. They 
were full of warm, rosy life, that responded feel- 
ingly to the coming sun. The mountains to the 
east had an astonishingly dark shade, considering 
they were covered with snow. They were right 
between me and the glowing heaven, and even 
flame shows black against the sun. How easily I 
could see the world roll as the light advanced 
down the mountains at the west. Below, all was 
in deep shadow. I might as well say deep night. 

Then morning mists started out like little 
islands and floated far below me. They eddied 
slowly down the gorge toward the Rhone, passed 
the avalanche that buried a whole village, and laid 
themselves at the feet of the Oberland Alps on 
the other side of the Rhone. 

I could not tell that a breath of air stirred, but 
I could see a little flurry of the new fallen snow — 
that was six inches deep where I stood, and much 
deeper on the mountain summits — occasionally 
whisked over the heads of the waiting mountains, 
as if brides were adorning themselves for their 
coming lord. 

Suddenly the sun pierced me with a shaft of 
light. It seemed like a real shaft, it came so sud- 
denly and so powerfully. Then the warm air just 
breathed over the hill tops from Italy, and there 



58 Sights and Insights. 

stood out from every one of them a straight 
streamer of cooled mist. The mountains had run 
up their colors to celebrate the new day, I may 
well say colors, for the sun streamed redly through 
those at the east, transfused those at the north and 
south with pure white light, and reflected purple 
from those at the west* I could but remember 
Dr. M'Cosh's figure, borrowed from this scene, of 
the spreading of the Gospel light, and, standing 
rapt and awed in the brilliance, I said, " Even so y 
come, Lord Jesus," and come quickly. 
* See Frontispiece. 



VIII. 

THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA ON THE ALPS. 

^HE wind blows northward over one thou- 
sand thirsty miles of Sahara sands. Thirsty 
and faint with heat, it plunges down into the 
Mediterranean Sea. It rollicks over the cool 
plains ; it washes the yellow dust from its wings 
in the bright blue waters ; it plays with its billows 
as children play with the sweet new-mown hay, 
tossing them over its shoulders, and scattering 
them far and wide with cheering sounds of rip- 
pling laughter. 

But most of all it quenches its fiery thirst. It 
sips from every wave more daintily than the bee 
from flower, and rolls itself into a thousand con- 
volutions that every part of its substance may bathe 
in the sea and drink its fill. But daintily as it 
drinks, it drinks largely. It drinks and carries 
away the whole upper part of the neighboring Red 
Sea to the depth of eight feet every year. It takes 
somewhat less from this sea, it is true, but still 
enough to quench the thirst of every zephyr. 

Then it journeys northward and breathes over 



60 Sights and Insights. 

Italy. It imparts an incredible fertility to the 
fields : it bathes every leaf of the mulberry and the 
vine, washes every golden green, or glowing purple 
bunch of grapes, till it looks bright enough to 
shine in the night. It waters every flower on the 
plains of Lombardy. Then, striking the southern 
slopes of the Alps, it careers like a troop of wild 
horse over forest and rock, till it has leaped three 
miles in air. Then it plays around the summits 
of Monte Rosa and the Matterhorn. But it is 
hot and thirsty no longer. Indeed, it has brought 
more moisture than it can carry. So, dense clouds 
burst out of what was clear air in Italy. And 
these clouds are pressed like a saturated sponge 
against the cold summits. The particles of mist, 
drawn together by some hidden law, arrange them- 
selves in airy ranks, join feathery crystal to crystal, 
wear necklaces of more than diamond beauty, and 
with mazy dance and quiet song, eddy over the 
shoulders of the mountains, and down the northern 
sides. It is so light that a boy's breath would 
scatter a whole cloud of it, and so beautiful that 
only the power that fashions the flower could make 
it. Thus, the Mediterranean Sea comes into 
Switzerland. Let us go up and see it. 

From the Matterhorn there runs a glittering 
chain of giant peaks : a little south of east, the 



The Mediterranean Sea on the Alps. 61 

Breithorn, Pollux, Castor, the Lyskamm; turning 
northward, Monte Rosa, Weissthor, and Cima de 
Jazzi ; westward to the Stockhorn and the Gorner 
Grat, completing the circuit, and ending near the 
roots of the Matterhorn aforesaid. Within these 
peaks you see an irregular basin ten miles long 
and five wide, which is considerably inclined, and 
the edge broken out toward the west. 

Into this basin, as I have said, pours the Medi- 
terranean Sea, and also part of the Atlantic. The 
feathery crystals swirl over these mountain tops, 
weave fantastic wreaths on the steep sides, and, as 
they accumulate in vast drifts, slip into the valley 
below. The motion, cold, and wind, change the 
snow feathers into little pellets somewhat like shot. 
These, being heaped hundreds of feet deep in the 
valley, begin to move slowly down the incline 
of the basin toward the west. At first its motion 
is exceedingly slow, hardly accomplishing an inch 
a day. But when it comes down where the gorge 
is narrower, the incline steeper, the snow heavier, 
because turned to ice, pushed from behind, drawn 
by gravitation before, lubricated by abundant 
water that the sun thaws from its surface, it moves 
more swiftly, and averages a foot a day. 

You must not fail to observe that this is not a 
regular symmetrical valley. Such a one does 



62 Sights and Insights, 

not exist in nature. Between each of the peaks 
mentioned that form the boundary line lie rugged 
ravines that pour their tributary frozen torrents 
into the icy stream below. No less than ten 
branch glaciers thus run into the main stream. 
When these wide rivers crowd one another for 
room to move, it seems as if the barriers of the 
hills must give way. 

Those inaccessible cliffs keep up a kind of con- 
stant fusilade of rocks, broken from their steep 
sides, upon the ice-fields below. As the glacier 
moves on, century by century, it bears the burden 
thus heaped upon it. Its own emphatic action 
also tears rocks from the mountain sides and takes 
them along with it. Therefore every glacier, or 
branch of one, has a confused belt of boulders, 
little and large, lying as a border or fringe on either 
side. It pushes them along, crowding them up 
the steeps or tumbling them down. It breaks 
some in pieces, and then grinds their pieces to 
powder. When two glaciers unite they combine 
these two fringes of rock called lateral or side 
moraines into one, thereafter called a medial or 
middle moraine. This gigantic rampart of rocks, 
sometimes an eighth of a mile wide and twenty 
feet high, thereafter moves down the valley near 
the middle of the ice on which it rests. Thus the 



The Meditetranean Sea on the Alps. 63 

eye is led backward by the line to the point of 
division, and then along the divided lines to the 
cliffs that gave them birth. 

Sometimes, however, a glacier absorbs and 
buries some of its moraines for a few miles, and then 
disgorges them again. If the gorge be too narrow 
to receive a new tributary at its full width, the 
stream must flow faster and deeper. And if the 
meeting streams incline toward each other, the 
inner edges with their burdens of rock must be 
folded under and the rocks buried. But after be- 
ing carried for miles in their icy tomb, the sun 
comes, bright as the resurrection angel, thaws away 
their cold grave clothes, and they come out to the 
life and warmth of day once more. 

The joy of no day on a dashing river, leaping 
from log to log, ever equaled my day on this frozen 
river, leaping from floating rock to rock, and bil- 
low to billow. I began at the lower end where the 
ice-river ceases, and the water-river dashes full 
and wide. The water seems colder than any ice. 
It is white with the flour of rock that the strong 
ice has ground to powder. A small mountain of 
boulders remains at the lower end, too large for 
the river to carry away. Sometimes it is not so 
very small either. I have seen one of these ter- 
minal moraines over two miles long, and two hun- 



64 Sights aud Insights. 

dred feet high. When several seasons are cold, 
and fail to thaw away the descending stream, the 
glacier pushes down the valley part of a mile, and 
crowd this mountain along with it. Then warm 
seasons reduce the glacier to ordinary dimen- 
sions. But the moraine remains a monument of 
its advance. 

I clambered up the rocky sides of the ravine 
when the glacier was too precipitous to be as- 
cended, and came upon it a mile above. It was 
billowed like the sea. Little streams that the sun 
had thawed from the surface ran in every direc- 
tion, and plunged down fearful depths. These 
clefts mostly run across the stream, but are turned 
in all directions if one part of the stream flows 
faster than another. An obstruction or bend will 
cause one side to flow faster than the other, and 
bring the clefts and billows into curves, or swing 
them round nearly parallel to the shore. These 
chasms are from an inch to a rod wide, and often 
a hundred feet deep. They open down through 
the clear blue ice. We are obliged to leap over 
or go round them. To slip on either side and 
drop into their cold embrace would most likely be 
death. To avoid this men tie themselves together, 
so that one would not fall more than ten feet be- 
fore he would be jerked out by the others. 



The Mediterranean Sea on the Alps. 65 

The extent to which the sun thaws the rivers out 
of these great reservoirs may sometimes be seen by 
a rock, which has protected the ice under it from 
heat, while the surrounding ice has been thawed 
away. I saw a slab of rock thirty feet in diameter 
and ten feet thick supported by a shaft of ice like a 
center table. Its lower surface was seven feet 
above the general surface of the ice. How many 
times it had crushed its diminishing pillar, and 
commenced the process again, cannot be told. 

Leaving the glacier, we scaled one of its banks. 
It was so steep that, standing perpendicular, we 
could touch the mountain with our hands. The 
hot sun blazed on our backs. We got so high that 
birds were almost invisible below. The great bil- 
lows of ice were changed to wrinkles on the face 
of the glaciers. There was no sign of a path. 
But we toiled on for a full hour by the watch, and 
it seemed long enough for three or four. So we 
came to the Rime-house. 



IX. 

A PRE-HISTORIC GLACIER. 

(^ 

J I HAVE had a day of joy and shouting. It 
^ began at five o'clock this morning amid the 
charming hills, fields, and cascades of Meirin- 
gen, and closes now at five o'clock in the evening 
amid the eternal desolations and ice of the Grim- 
sel Pass. I shall have time to refer to but little 
else than what is indicated in the title. 

Science tells that the north of Europe, and our 
own continent as far south as the fortieth paral- 
lel of latitude, were once covered with glaciers. 
Also, that the present glaciers of the Alps were 
once very much more extensive than at present. 

I had seen proofs of the first carved in the rocks 
on the top of Mount Holyoke, and in the erratic 
blocks or boulders carried hundred of miles from 
their original bed. To-day I have seen ample 
proof of the second. I have seen it before in a 
dozen valleys of the Alps, some reaching far into 
sunny Italy, but nowhere to such an extent. 

My first work was to climb a hill of seven hundred 
and sixty-eight feet in height, and so large that it took 



A Pre-Historic Glacier. 6j 

nearly an hour to go over. It was covered with ma- 
terials that the old glacier had torn from the rocky- 
sides of the ravine. Some of it had been brought 
forty miles. And as the ice river rarely averages 
more than one foot a day, some of that scattered ma- 
terial may have been one thousand years grinding 
along the sides or bottom of the ravine before it 
was deposited at the glacier's terminal moraine. 

Coming down into the valley of the Aar, on the 
other side I saw evidences of glacial action. The 
perpendicular face of the ravine, a thousand feet 
above, has been plowed with a deep horizontal fur- 
row. A gigantic molding has been run along the 
side of the room, that shows the height of the old, 
old glacier. That is where the floating rocks on 
the surface of the stream eddied, and cut their 
nature, if not their names, on enduring tablets. 

And notwithstanding the liability of rocks to fall 
away from such heights, and lose the inscriptions 
the forces of nature have cut upon them, I may 
safely say that I have seen miles of such inscrip- 
tions still remaining. These are particularly clear 
where a valley suddenly contracts, and the stream 
must be driven through a narrow compass ; or 
when a side glacier undertakes to crowd itself in 
where there was scarcely room enough for the 
main stream. An admirable example of this is 



68 Sights and Insights. 

seen at Chiavenna. The main stream had come 
down the Val Giacomo from the heights of the 
Splugen, and found its bed suddenly narrowed just 
below where the city now stands. Just above this 
place the glacier from the valley of the Maira un- 
dertook to enter. Then came a fight. As usual 
the combatants have passed away, but the clifts 
below the city bear the marks of the strife from 
base to summit. 

Near the summit of the Grimsel, at the head of 
this valley of the Aar, where it suddenly turns 
from north and south to west, within five hours of 
the present glacier, the action of the former one 
becomes strikingly apparent. Two granite hills, 
which nearly meet in the center, almost close the 
entire valley. The ice-stream could not all t be. 
driven through so small an opening, so it rose 
above them. Each of these hills became polished 
by the action of ice and sand. There are acres 
to-day as smooth as if hundreds of thousands of 
men had been at work on them for centuries. You 
easily distinguish how high the river flowed. The 
hills are smoothed to a certain limit, and splin- 
tered and rough above it. 

I have passed large areas again and again, where 
the bottom of the ravine was polished by the same 
means. It is no wonder that the river Aar, and 



A Pre-Historic Glacier. 69 

every other one that comes from a glacier, carries 
so much powdered granite that it could not well 
be whiter. 

What a day's walk it has been. From the top 
of the hill first spoken of, revealed in the freshness 
of early morning, the charming valley of Im Hof is 
visible. It is perfectly level, and embroidered by 
the silver streams of the Aar in most intricate 
pattern. Its various fields of green grass, golden 
grain, tufted trees, flowers numerous enough to 
give a prevailing tint of crimson to some sections, 
others browned by the shadows of the vast mount- 
ains that stand on every side, produce the im- 
pression that it must be a picture of some fairy 
land. At your left is a gorge three hundred feet 
deep, and not more than twenty wide. Through 
the bottom the river dashes. You stand entranced, 
gazing first at the rural beauty of the sweet 
valley, and then at the awful grandeur of snow- 
peaks that surround it on every side. 

I have passed dozens of cascades that would 
make the reputation of any White Mountain vil- 
lage. They have wonderful beauty and variety. 
Some leaped from the crags a solid volume of 
water, but before the awful descent was accom- 
plished they had turned to spray. The wind 
drifted these white clouds hither and thither, as 



70 Sights and Insighh. 

easily as it might lift a bridal vail. On one or 
two instances it took up the little child born on 
the heights, that was falling from its home, and 
gently carried it back up the precipice, and re- 
stored it to its mother. Then the wayward child 
tumbled off again, and again the patient wind re- 
turned it to its place. There were cataracts up- 
ward as well as downward. 

I came to the falls at Handeck. I was in 
a ravine two hundred and fifty feet deep. Every 
foot bore evidence that the water had cut this 
path for itself out of the living rock. The chasm 
was full of blinding spray. As I looked up to the 
infinite treasures of water pouring from above, I 
thought to myself, " This fall is like the Reichen- 
bach." I ought to have known better. God 
never makes such things as cataracts alike. He 
may repeat himself in flowers and sunbeams, but 
every such thing as a mountain or cataract has an 
individuality. Climbing to the top I discovered 
it. The milky river comes roaring from the south, 
and takes its fearful plunge far deeper than Ni- 
agara. Every drop seems to stand out from its 
fellows from horror at the plunge. The mountain 
torrent Aerlenbach, just thawed out of the vast 
snow-fields, comes dashing down from the mount- 
ains at the west, and within fifteen feet of the other 



A Pre-Historic Glacier. yi 

fall, plunges into the same abyss. The water from 
the west meets the water from the south about 
half way down, and the noonday sun seals the 
marriage with a ring of rainbow color. 

To-night I sleep nearly half a mile higher than 
last night. The narrow path hither has often run 
along the face of precipices, with the river roaring 
and dashing a hundred feet below. Just above me 
is a little lake, from the surface of which the ice is 
never thawed. In 1799 the Austrians and French 
fought for the possession of these icy solitudes, 
and put their dead under the cold ice of the lake. 

I have shivered here for an hour past in my 
overcoat. Although it is the middle of July I 
cannot keep warm. I will put myself under these 
warm woolen blankets, and they will bring me a 
long tin can of hot water, for which I shall have 
the warmest affection. Meanwhile I am coldly 
yours, etc. 



X. 



A CLIMB TO THIRTEEN THOUSAND SIX 
HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-FIVE FEET ABOVE 
THE SEA. 

HE preparation for this ascent was com- 
menced, unconsciously, a few days previous 
by footing it over the Gemini — which is 
equivalent to going up and down Bunker Hill 
Monument, two hundred and twenty-two feet high, 
seventeen times, and walking ten miles before 
noon. The next preparation was having forty 
nails driven into each sole, leaving their large 
pointed heads projecting one eighth of an inch. 
Then followed a day's work, tramping glaciers, 
scaling precipices, and making ascents without 
paths equal to twenty-seven monuments afore- 
said, to say nothing of descents. The day after 
(July 15) was commenced with a short excursion 
of three hours before breakfast in three inches of 
new fallen snow with frozen shoes, not to say feet, 
up the Gorner Grat, an ascent of one thousand 
eight hundred and sixty-two feet, to see the sun 
rise. The afternoon was spent in harmony with 
the morning. Then came to-day. 



A Climb, 73 

The porter announced himself by a loud rap, and 
the time by saying, "Two o'clock." We rose at 
once, and were ready as soon thereafter as possi- 
ble. We moved out over a rough hillside with, as 
yet, no hint of a summer morning. Half of an old 
moon partially illuminated our way when not ob- 
scured by flying clouds. An extremely rough 
precipice of one thousand feet was descended with 
great care, and the lateral moraine of the Gorner 
glacier entered. It consisted of loose blocks of 
stone, from the smallest size to blocks twenty feet 
in diameter. These had been driven up the steep 
hillside a hundred feet, and seemed like a huge 
furrow turned by some irresistible plow. 

Soon after the rough mountainous ice was en- 
countered, and the way picked and followed with 
something of an idea of what might happen if the 
aforesaid nails should not hold, and we be dropped 
into a crevasse of unknown depth. Soon the 
medial moraines were met, and one after another 
the whole ten vast winrows of rocks, a hundred or 
two feet wide, forty high, and one mile long, were 
passed. Then the path led up the steep incline 
of a branch glacier, and tints of the morning be- 
gan to appear. 

Coming to a cataract in the ice stream, we were 
compelled to leave its bed and clamber up a rocky 



74 Sights and Insights. 

precipice about two hundred feet high. Breakfast 
for the second time was taken on a shelf half way 
up, and the sun hung our dining-room with more 
gorgeous decorations than any fresco painter ever 
proposed. 

We soon came upon another glacier, stretching 
for miles every way. I asked the guide how far it 
was to that ever-present enormous Matterhorn, that 
seemed within a pistol shot ; and he said, " Two 
hours' walk." Up this vast plain we passed, until, 
soon after six o'clock, we reached the summit of 
the pass, two thousand eight hundred and seventy- 
one feet higher than we started. We had also re- 
ascended the one thousand feet of our early de- 
scent. We then went into the highest human hab- 
itation in Europe, ten thousand eight hundred 
and ninety-nine feet above the sea. 

Just before us stood the Breithorn, crowned with 
a few hundred feet of snow, looking rosy and warm 
in the morning sunlight. We had not thought of 
ascending it, but it looked too bewitching, too near, 
and the guide settled the question by saying he 
would show us all the lakes of Italy. The time 
allowed for its ascent from this point is three hours 
of hard work. It would lengthen the regular time 
of our journey to about fifteen hours. It was now 
time to make special preparations for ice walking. 



A Climb. 75 

Everyman I had seen come in from an ice journey 
had looked much the color of the nose of a hard 
drinker. And the regular thing to expect from an 
all-day trip in high altitudes is to have every ex- 
posed part peel, not only once, but three times, and 
leave one looking like a new baby for a long time 
after. I have seen men whose faces were so sore 
that it was impossible to eat any thing of greater 
consistency than soup for supper. To avoid this 
they frequently cover every exposed part with 
melted grease. Not anxious to treble on ourselves 
St. Bartholomew's style of martyrdom, we set 
about devising protection. Now I dislike as much 
as Diogenes to have any thing darken my land- 
scapes; but I accepted a double blue vail, and put 
over that a pair of green goggles. Being roped to- 
gether about ten feet apart, so that if one fell into a 
crevasse, or lost footing and slid down the mountain 
side, he need not go more than ten feet before he 
could be fished up, we set out. The landscape, or 
the snowscape, was full bright enough. And when 
a neck blushed under the warm kisses of the sun, 
it coyly protected itself behind the turned up flange 
of a turn-down collar. 

The snow was yet perfectly hard. With diffi- 
culty the edge of the shoe could be driven in suffi- 
ciently to afford foothold in the steeper slopes. 



7& Sights and Insights. 

Then the guide cut amazingly small places, into 
which a toe or heel could be placed, and so we 
worked up. It may be conceived to be a difficult 
thing to go up stairs two hours at a time. But 
what if there are no stairs, and a thousand feet be- 
low you? 

There spreads before my mind now that immense 
field of snow, mountain-plateau, side and summit 
covered. It stretches for miles. It crowns the 
tops. It is crowded off its precipices, showing a 
thickness of hundreds of feet. It constitutes the 
immense reservoirs from which flows, not a few 
feeble fountains, but a great river, rolling for cen- 
turies. 

It creaked under foot, as if it were keen Decem- 
ber, and not sultry July. My vail was a mass of 
ice below my nose, and frozen to my beard. The 
ash alpenstock felt like a pitch-fork handle in a 
barn in winter. Then the wind began to blow. 
We sheltered ourselves under the lee the best we 
could. Then it blew right down the mountain. 
How perfectly huge it got to be ! It improved and 
enlarged on acquaintance. It got steeper also. 
More steps had to be cut. It looked much steeper 
above than below. And a breath of that thin air 
did not seem to be of any use whatever, so we took 
more, and at a fearful rate. It was not one foot 



A Climb. m 77 

before the other, but one beside the other ; and, 
where steps were not cut, a foot dashed sideways 
against the mountain did not often leave its 
little print more than three inches above the 
other. 

Suddenly we looked over a precipice and there 
was Zermat, five thousand three hundred and sev- 
enty feet below. Not a person could be seen in its 
busy streets. Man is a small thing when viewed 
from above. Beyond were the vast Oberland Alps, 
lifting the dazzling peaks above the sea of clouds 
at the base. Close by were twenty famous peaks, 
a little to the east the vast reservoirs of the 
GSrner Glacier — itself at our feet, every moraine of 
its ten tributaries perfectly lined on its surface — a 
world of snow. But at the South, Italy — its three 
lakes perfectly outlined, but hardly larger than on 
a map ; and beyond, the historic plains of Lom- 
bardy. Mont Blanc reflected the sunlight to our 
eyes, and bid us hasten to her. We used what air 
there was in shouting halleluias, and let breathing 
be suspended for a while. It is something to be 
above this world. You feel its swing, its rush 
through space. It has no mastery of you. You 
have put it under your feet. 

The keen air bit shrewdly. We could easily 
conceive ourselves to be one fifteenth of the way 



78 Sights and Insights. 

to the temperature of two hundred degrees below 
zero. We remembered the hard steeps, and re- 
solved to come down more easily. Where we were 
not obliged to put our feet carefully in the cut steps 
we sat down, and with an alpenstock for a break, 
shot away like the good old times of boyhood. O 
what a thing an Alp would be for a sled-ride ! 

These swift glissades took us over the distance 
to the hut on the summit of the St. Theodul Pass 
much more quickly than we went the other way. 

Half an hour of long leaps in the softened snow 
brought us down from the hut to where God had 
planted whole fields with his forget-me-nots ; and 
two hours later settled us at ease in our inn at 
Val Tournanche. We have been twelve hours on 
foot, almost without resting; have been up Bunker 
Hill monument thirty times and down forty, besides 
putting a long distance behind us. We are tired, 
but we have lived high and long to-day. 

Already my companion is sleeping heavily in 
bed. Whenever he turns he discovers his tender 
point, and wakes, saying, " O my sore ears ! " 



XL 

HOW TO MAKE A MOUNTAIN. 

'HE Matterhorn is such a mountain as was for 
a long time deemed inaccessible by men who 
could stand with perfectly steady nerves on 
r>ny precipice, who could face a cliff and let an- 
other man scramble up their backs, then take the 
upper man's feet in their hands and lift him up till 
he could find some projection to which he could 
cling with finger-nails and eyelids, and by an in- 
definite repetition of the process, scale any access- 
ible height. It is such a mountain that four out of 
the seven who first made the ascent fell four fifths 
of a mile, almost perpendicularly, in attempting to 
come down. It requires such care in descent, that 
it takes five hours to come down a distance that was 
ascended in three hours. It is such a spike of a 
mountain, that men have declared that no power 
could have driven it up through the crust of the earth 
and left standing on end. Thus it remained the pons 
asinorum of geologists till some one declared that it 
was but the remaining splinter of a once lofty range. 
Now that is an easy thing to read and accept ; 



80 Sights and Insights. 

but power to comprehend must result from a very- 
extensive education, under the tuition of the hu- 
gest object-teaching the Creator ever set on foot in 
this world. It is easy to believe that a mountain 
range has been lifted as high, or higher than the 
Matterhorn ; but the crucial question is, What has 
become of the rest of it ? What force so mighty 
as to carry away huge mountains, and yet so 
quiet as not to topple down the splinter that 
remains ? 

You commence the a, b, c of your education at 
Visp, Switzerland, or Chatillon, Italy. You see 
swift, tumultuous rivers running freight trains that 
never stop, and never get by, on express time and 
a fearful down grade — never encumbering the road 
by returning empty cars — and the whole unending 
train, for uncounted thousands of years, white as 
milk with powdered rock. And so it will carry 
freight from mountain to sea as long as gravitation 
draws, and the sun returns the empty trains along 
the upper air lines. 

You get a new text-book on the same subject as 
you pass over acres of rock-freshet, hundreds of 
feet deep, that some mountain torrent tore out of a 
gully and spread over the plain. Two days before 
I passed Frutigen, a swollen mountain torrent put 
its nose under a few million tons of rock, rolled it 



How to Make a Mountain. 8 1 

down the mountain, pulverized it with its own 
weight, covered three farms, and -buried a saw-mill 
fifteen feet deep in ten minutes. You never know 
when one of these stout fellows will roll up his 
sleeves and go to work. I have ,seen in twenty 
different places where such shovelers have been at 
work this summer as would fill the Back Bay in 
twenty-four hours if they could be kept steadily at 
it under proper direction. I would contract 
to fill at ten dollars an acre if I had one under my 
control. That is one feeder for the down freight 
train of the river. 

You go into a higher class in the same branch of 
education as you walk along narrow valleys under 
precipices a few thousand feet high. There is a 
hundred or two feet of debris at the foot of the 
cliff. But out in the plain you see where these 
mountain Titans have been playing marbles, and 
left their little pebbles, ten, twenty, or seventy feet 
in diameter, lying loose around the playground. 
They drop them every .year. You see some that 
have rushed down like thunderbolts this very sum- 
mer. Think of having one of these uninvited vis- 
itors hastily knock at your back door some dark 
night and ask admittance. There is no time to par- 
ley, and you can't well refuse. The natives often put 
their houses in the lee of a great fellow in case 



82 Sights and Insights. 

another should follow the same track. That is 
another bringer of down freight. 

But much of this material is too coarse for the 
river's carrying. There must be some almost in- 
finite mills to grind the grist to powder. Well, 
there are — hundreds of them. Some are twenty- 
miles long, five miles wide, and seven hundred feet 
deep. They are greatly reduced from what they 
once were ; but still they do a thriving business, 
and each one gives a river more rock dust than it 
can carry. Of course, I mean the glaciers. 

Now come about two thirds the way up the Mat- 
terhorn, full high enough for you or me, and finish 
your education. Perhaps you have sat in the la- 
mented Powers' studio at Florence, and seen the 
chips. fly from the solid marble, and feature after 
feature of some friendly face appear. Here 
beamed a smile, there thought mounted its 
throne — and every-where soul appeared. Alas ! 
since the time of Pygmalion, it is only the soul 
of the worker. So I sit down here and see God 
working away at the Matterhorn. I hear the fall 
of the pieces chipped away. It is impossible to 
approach many parts of the mountain on account 
of the constant cannonade of rocks from above. 
You see what you take to be a well-trodden path 
to the summit — it is a well-trodden path from the 



How to Make a Mountain. 83 

summit. And such a volley of stones, broken 
from the steep sides, rushes down the path that 
you can scarcely cross between the shots. 

What becomes of the pieces ? Look down on 
two sides, and afterward on the third, and there 
are those immense ice mills ready to receive, carry, 
crush, and deliver to the swift river all that comes. 
Look at the north-east side. The Matterhorn gla- 
cier covers the first portion of the mountain base 
where snow can linger. It does its best with the 
debris of that whole side. Then it delivers it 
over to the 'Zmut glacier for a second grinding. 
That is a grist-mill that covers five square miles ; 
and so thoroughly is its work done that there is 
no terminal moraine at the lower end. The river 
can lift it all. Glance at the south-east side. There 
runs the Furggen glacier, doing the same work. 
So on the south side. Walking over the surface 
you can hear the craunch that crushes rock to 
sand, and the grind that turns sand to dust. 
Therefore the rivers never lack their burden ; 
therefore there is no accumulation of chips about 
the foot of the monument, or statue, while the 
work goes on. 

One might think this process would tend to flat- 
ness, and not precipitousness. Not so. Clear 

away the foot of a mountain, and the pressure 

6 



84 Sights and Insights. 

of the superincumbent mass is so immense that 
rock will not abide, but flies in splinters. Coal 
often leaps out like grape-shot from the breast of 
a gallery, because it cannot endure the pressure 
of the mountain above. The lower down the 
greater the pressure, and the greater the ten- 
dency to break away. Thus the mountain is un- 
dermined. Then follows a breaking down of the 
cliffs above, and where a range of mountains stood 
sublime there only remains a solitary shaft. The 
rest is on the plains of Italy, Switzerland, and in 
the sea. 

Never shall I forget my first clear vision of its 
majesty and glory. It had rained dismally all 
night. But up in its upper airs the wind had 
driven the moist snow against its steep sides, and 
whitened it from summit to base. At nine o'clock 
Sunday morning the enfolding clouds rolled away, 
and it stood out in the heavens above without any 
visible support, white as an angel's wing, pure and 
stable enough for the throne of God. I felt awed, 
and almost afraid. For an hour or two the shift- 
ing clouds gave us visions of as much as we could 
bear till we went to church, and heard read the 
lesson of the day : " In His hands_are the deep 
places of the earth : the strength of the hills is his 
also." 



How to Make a Mountain. 85 

Neither shall I ever forget my last visions. I 
was going down through deep ravines and among 
lofty mountains to Chatillon, thirty miles to the 
south. Again and again I bade it farewell, think- 
ing that I had gazed upon its sublime head for the 
last time. But, again and again, its dazzling white- 
ness would peer out over the dark mountains with 
which I was surrounded. It never seemed to grow 
more distant. It almost assumed the appearance 
of a personality, watching me down through the 
dark surroundings of the ravine. It seemed like 
the pillar of cloud to the Israelites — as if God 
were in it. It showed how hard it is to get away 
from great things and questions. They meet you 
at every turn ; tower over you like a colossus of 
doom, or angel of protection. And, when the 
great thing enlarges into the infinite, you can never 
begin to get away. 



XII. 

A GERMAN PORTFOLIO. 
A Picture of Social Life. 

Jj" CHANCED upon such a bit of pure German 
[ life here last night that I must sketch it. We 
came from Antwerp via Aix-la-Chapelle. As 
we sat taking our supper I saw an advertisement 
of an Abonnements Concert, to be given in the 
hall immediately adjacent on that very evening. 
Even before we were half through supper the 
doors were thrown open, and we had, mingled 
with our dessert, some of the choicest productions 
of Mendelssohn, Sivori, Paganini, Mozart, and 
Weber. We did not finish that supper till ten 
o'clock. It was as if we had chanced upon a bit 
of real nature in a shady grotto in spring-time, 
where there was a smell of violets but no sight of 
them, an assurance that May flowers must grow in 
such a place, a place full of musical water and 
birds, and you have only to half doze to have it 
full of nymphs and dryads. So we found a real 
bit of German nature, and we knew it by the smell. 
I had asked a half a dozen men not to smoke in 



A German Portfolio. 87 

the cars during the day's ride, for the ladies were 
not used to it. Immediately some one else would 
get in, and Sysiphean work had to be begun anew. 
But here every man, and some women, began to 
puff. It looked like too large a job to enforce 
" nicht rauchen " on that crowd. Besides, for that 
very thing they had come. The hall was set with 
little tables. Waiters circulated every-where, 
bottles abounded, and in the midst of the most 
affecting passages in C minor you would hear the 
squeaking pop of the cork. The smoke cloud's 
rolling dun got so thick that it was difficult to see 
clearly. Then was introduced the witch's dream. 
The music was most weird, full of unexpected 
starts ; strains began, and turned to something 
else. Fifty Germans jerking at fiddles, whanging 
on cymbals, and the jerkiest of them all standing 
up on high in a dense fog acting as a conductor, 
were enough to realize to our dull senses any con- 
ception the witchiest witch ever had. When I 
used to go to fireworks on Boston Common, they 
were wont to burn all sorts of compounds of vil- 
lainous saltpeter to get a sulphurous canopy over 
head, black enough to make the later fires show 
brightly. So here. It needed a thick, heavy 
atmosphere, one that would not vibrate sharply 
and quickly, that the soft, tender passages might 



88 Sights and Insights. 

glide softly and gently. So audience and musicians 
combined to produce the finer effects. 

The music was marvelously well done, the drink- 
ing and smoking marvelously ill done. Even the 
ladies unused to smoke forgot its presence in some- 
thing so fine and spirituelle. Hereafter I do not 
think I shall ask people not to smoke in the cars. 
The worst feature of it was a family of English- 
speaking people, I trust not Americans, who 
entered into the whole thing with the greatest 
zest, consuming cigars by the dozen, and bottles 
of wine even, the mother and little son declining 
neither. We unanimously concluded that we did 
not wish any young man, in whom we were inter- 
ested, to come to Germany till he was wine and 
smoke proof, that is, as safes are fire and burglar 
proof, to keep them out. 

It is needful that concerts be cheap in Germany; 
for how could one ask a lady to an entertainment, 
where the price of the music poured into the ear 
would be small compared to the price of the wine 
poured into her throat, and the smoke poured into 
her nose ? The musicians all came down into the 
audience during the long recess, and clinked 
glasses, and helped their friends add another de- 
gree of dinginess to the smoked atmosphere, then 
went back and played their softest. We every- 



A German Portfolio. 89 

where see that fineness dwells with grossness- 
Some finest fancies are distilled from bad gin ; and 
evidently some of the finest music can be rendered 
and thoroughly enjoyed by wine-bibbers and 
smokers. 

Cologne Cathedral. 

I have always had the reputation of going wild 
on cathedrals. I am willing. I have always con- 
tended that the one at Milan bore away the palm. 
I repent. This one at Cologne is incomparable. 
Perhaps I adhered to Milan because I saw it last, 
and maybe shall again. 

" How happy I could be with either, 
"Were t'other dear charmer away." 

Think of an arched, groined, solid brick ceiling, 
one hundred and seventy feet high, supported by 
sixty clusters of branching columns ; of five aisles 
five hundred and eleven feet long, two towers 
five hundred and eleven feet high, covered not 
with a roof that one sees or thinks of, but with a 
forest of five thousand pinnacles connected with 
flying buttresses, a perfect wilderness of stone, 
filled with myriad leaves, roses, arabesques, and 
even seemingly living things. No, you cannot 
think it. It is no use to try; But come and see 
it ; and if you do not run about its vastness, admire 



90 Sights and Insights. 

a hundred varying pictures, shout halleluia like 
a well-born Methodist, and declare it is the grand- 
est conception of the brain and creation of the 
hand of, man, you are very different from me. 
This one building is worth coming three thousand 
five hundred miles to see ; and when I remember 
that the British Channel is part of the distance, it 
is saying a great deal, but not too much. 

We went into the sculptors' shops and saw new 
blocks just finished, full of fresh, new beauty ; for 
this building, founded six hundred years ago, is 
not yet finished. But all Germany is actively 
pushing its completion. It almost seemed a pity 
that such single blocks, so beautiful in form and 
foliated cusp — one ikiial twenty feet high, just 
placed, won unbounded admiration at the Paris 
Exposition — should be lost in the immensity of the 
structure, and the contiguity of a thousand others. 
But there could be no grand cathedral else. Every 
individual helps to make the grand completeness. 
And the true eye sees every one. So when the 
living stones are polished to the similitude of a 
palace, and builded into the temple of our God 
for a habitation of the Spirit, no stone will be too 
beautiful for the structure, none overlooked by the 
all-seeing Eye. Blessed is he who is fit to be 
placed near the chief Corner-stone. 



A German Portfolio. 91 

Rhine Hills and Wiesbaden Plains. 

(Like many another picture, this one is chiefly- 
Valuable because it is somewhat old. 1869.) 

The relation between these seeming contrarieties 
is simple and intimate. After days of lounging 
among the hills of the ever-beautiful stream, I am 
whirled into this unbroken plain at evening, and 
though I left there hills, toil, poverty, frugality, 
and find here plain, luxury, wealth, and wasteful 
prodigality, yet the connection seems natural and 
intimate. Even the bees labor not for their own 
profit, and the laboring classes toil to support the 
waste of the idle. The wine grows on the slowly 
disintegrating stone of the Rhine hills, but it is 
brought here to be consumed. I have seen more 
money staked and lost here in half a minute than 
the toil of hundreds, along the steeps of the Rhine, 
could produce in a year. Were it not that the mill- 
ion toiled for the thousand to spend, there must be 
less prodigality. While these laces and jewels are 
before my eye, I see through them all to the hard 
toil of so many hundreds who earn, but never 
wear them. Up those extremely steep hills are 
toiling in the hot sun, without which no grape could 
hoard its sweetness, hundreds of women, with hard 
hands, bare arms, and coarsest raiment, all their 
blighted lives, to earn the gold that that finely 



92 Sights and Insights. 

dressed lady lays with such seeming carelessness 
on the gaming table, for such a brief moment, till 
the wheel of fate stops and the banker rakes it in. 
For a dozen centuries have the millions of Europe 
been giving their earnings to the few, and hence 
a few such places as this are possible. 

How like a mounting devil in the heart rules 
and raves the passion for gambling. I first 
thought it was all in fun. The gambling had just 
opened, the stream of chat flowed quite noisily. 
People hardly cared to look whether the chances 
were favorable or not. The bankers hoed in and 
flung out without much scrutiny. But soon all 
talk stopped. Players kept lists of all the lucky 
numbers ; they consulted lists kept on former occa- 
sions. Hands began to tremble. Faces grew hard 
and sharp. Color came and went. Breathing 
was audible in many cases. One old man had 
been lucky for a long time. He 'left his growing 
pile on the lucky number till it reached a very 
large sum, when all at once it went to the banker's 
hoard at one fell swoop. He fell back into a chair, 
and did not rally for a long time. A brown, hard- 
handed man came in, and reached over and laid 
down his coin, evidently his only piece, just earned 
likely. He lost and turned away, penniless, no 
doubt. An old lady, evidently not rich, stood 



A German Portfolio. 93 

nervously fingering a small bag of coin. Several 
times she won, and looked exultant ; then lost 
nearly all she had. Such a revulsion of feeling is 
inexpressible in words. 

Around me was an Eden garden, all of beauty 
and grace that God gives to trees, twining vines, 
blooming roses, flowing water, and graceful birds. 
But here also Satan had come ; here he proffered 
the seductive fruit ; here came men to eat greedily, 
even after they found it to be evil, only evil, and 
that continually. The few hundreds that play 
here lose one hundred and thirty-seven thousand 
dollars every year, and still they play on, and will, 
till the law that has doomed the practice goes into 
force some two years hence. 

Castle of the Wartburg. 

Its commanding height was soon reached, its 
relics of Luther and Saint Elizabeth examined, 
and I sat down to view the vast stretch of country 
that lies at the foot of this place of power. I lin- 
gered long after the sun had gone down, and the 
full moon lit up the wide landscape. 

As I sat on the old drawbridge, long after every 
thing about the castle had become quiet, and the 
sounds of life in the city below had sunk to rest, 
I closed my eyes, and saw troops of the men that 



94 Sights and Insights. 

for ages have made this place their strong tower. 
They passed in by me — crusaders from Palestine, 
pilgrims from Rome, peasants asking charity, lords 
having extorted taxes, slaves bearing burdens, ty- 
rants dragging captives ; all the old armor in the 
museum was full of men, those mailed forms of 
horses were prancing with life, and just as all the 
past lived before me in imagination, some one be- 
gan to play a harp in reality in one of the rooms 
above me, and the grand contest of skill among the 
Minnesingers of four hundred and fifty years ago 
became a thing of to-day. Other instrumental 
music followed, and the contest seemed to be go- 
ing forward, when suddenly all was changed in a 
moment. A magnificent voice began to sing Old 
Hundred. Three hundred years passed in a flash, 
and Luther was there in the very room where he 
so often sung, if he did not compose, that grand 
old song of praise. The contest of warriors dis- 
appeared, the trial of singers became as nothing, 
for Luther sang to fight the devil. His carnal 
weapon, the inkstand, had proved unavailing, and 
having learned that the " devil cannot abide good 
music," he was pouring forth the best he knew to 
his discomfiture. There was an evident spirit of 
victory ringing out in those exultant notes. The 
song ceased, and I could see Luther, in what he 



A German Portfolio. 95 

called his Patmos, writing his translation of the 
Bible, to give God's word to the people of Ger- 
many. What a word of power ! 

For hundreds of years Power has had here its 
seat. As far as the eye can reach it made itself 
felt century after century. Up this hill, over this 
drawbridge, under this heavy gateway, have come 
suppliants asking mercy, subjects bringing tribute, 
mighty men to do homage ; but it has all passed 
away, and the power never reached beyond the 
horizon's rim. But in that cell that looks out on 
the western sky, yet faintly blushing with the hues 
of sunset, sits a man preparing to send out God's 
word of power. It goes forth, and the continent 
cannot contain its divine energy. It runs to and 
fro in the whole earth ; it increases with- the lapse 
of time. Surely this is the place to learn, that 
while some trust in horses, and some in chariots, 
we should remember the name and word of the 
Lord our God. 

Palaces and Hovels. 

I have walked through many palaces, have been 
wearied with their extent, dazzled by their brill- 
iancy, and amazed at their incalculable richness. 
But right by their doors I come to the hovels of 
the poor. I do not wonder that Death knocks 



g6 Sights and Insights. 

with equal step at their several doors ; they are 
close together. I see in the very gardens, where 
the velvet turf is not good enough for the feet of 
royalty, old, withered, crushed women, down on 
their scarcely protected knees, delving their hands 
in the dirt. They have never known ease, refine- 
ment, development. They are beasts of burden. 
They stagger under loads it often takes two men 
to lift to their backs. I have seen girls not eight 
years old already put into training for the life from 
which there can be no escape. As I think of this 
these treasures of fine gold become dim, the silver 
is cankered, these gorgeous tapestries are moth- 
eaten. Much as I love art and beauty, I should 
like to sell four or five palaces I have seen, and 
devote the proceeds to the elevation of the peas- 
antry, whose ancestors have earned it all. 

I close here in Berlin as I began near the banks 
of the Rhine, for the same thought has been 
pressed on me at every step. A hundred toil for 
one to waste. Every-where are we told that the 
life of the toiler is of no value. Let it be ex- 
pended in works of folly. Amid all these bound- 
less gatherings in museums there is nowhere shown 
a labor-saving machine. An old pipe of some 
despicable tyrant, a toe-nail of some disreputable 
saint, a plate out of which some king had his dog 



A German Portfolio. 97 

eat, is much more highly prized. So men mow, I 
suppose, though I have seen ten women mowing, to 
one man, with a straight, heavy snath. They hoe 
with such abominable instruments, that the temp- 
tation to go down on one's knees and dig with the 
hands is often yielded to. They clatter round in 
heavy wooden shoes. When I consider that a 
German has clogs on his feet, and a tremendous 
pipe always in his teeth, I cease to wonder at the 
slowness of his movements. 

The Grander Rhine. 

I apply this descriptive phrase to the river Elbe, 
at the close of a long ride upon its waters. Its 
features of grandeur and its pictures of beauty are 
all fresh. Its long and varied panorama is still 
floating before me. To be sure, the Rhine pict- 
ures are, farther back, overlaid by a thousand 
pictures of art and nature, succeeded by scenes 
of the greatest civil, aesthetic, and ecclesiastical 
importance. But still I think the epithet to be a 
proper one, and believe I shall think so when 
time shall have set the two panoramas at such 
distance as to make the comparison more just. 

The two rivers have much in common. Each 
is born in the Alps, has very few tributaries, is so 
fed from eternal hills that they know little of 



98 Sights and Insights. 

drought in summer; each flows mostly through very 
level and fertile plains, and has near its middle 
portion a mountainous region of about one hun- 
dred miles, through which to make its way amid 
scenes of alternate sublimity and beauty. 

The Rhine is superior to the Elbe in historic 
interest. Along its narrow shores have tramped 
the legions of the armies of all adjacent nations 
since history told us of its existence. By its side 
one begins to feel amazed that there meets him at 
such a distance from Rome, over the intervening 
Alps, along its ways of such extreme difficulty, 
such astonishing proof of the power of the empire 
of the " Eternal City." The pilgrimage to Rome 
begins in England. It lies along the highway of 
this ancient river. Indeed, one almost seems to 
have reached the Rome he. has read of in Tacitus 
and Caesar as name after name, inscription after 
inscription, and abundant sculpture from Roman 
chisels, meet his eye. Along this river have 
marched the armies of nearly all modern Europe. 
Here feudalism flourished, and here, thank God ! 
died, leaving such gigantic relics of its power as 
to make one wonder that tyranny could attain such 
dominance, and servitude such utter subjection. 

But the Elbe has its advantages over the Rhine. 
Its mountains are higher, their forms much more 



A German Portfolio, 99 

picturesque. The history of man's connection 
with it is much more pleasing, and the condition 
of man along its banks far better. Most of the 
rock is a white sandstone. Cleavage is both hori- 
zontal and perpendicular. Frequently a rock will 
be so eaten out into fissures, perpendicularly, as to 
appear like the many-columned nave of a Gothic 
church. Frequently they rise in regularly taper- 
ing pinnacles. Ofttimes vast rounded masses seem 
poised on columns quite too small for their sup- 
port. The walls have a perpendicularity that is 
calculated to fill one with awe, as the steamer runs 
so near as to be crushed, should one of the rounded 
masses be started by a breath. Houses are built 
with only three walls, the rock affording a fourth. 
Houses are inserted where five hundred feet of 
rock overhangs the roof. Standing on the bow of 
the steamer, you can sometimes hardly hear the 
noise of the swift paddle-wheels, for the multi- 
tudinous echoes of them that sound like a near 
cascade. 

The condition of man is more pleasing. The 
region is not cursed with wine-raising. The houses 
have a neat, roomy, and comfortable look. The 
flying shadows on the waving fields of grain are 
much more beautiful than the ghastly stiffness 
of peeled vine-stakes. The mountain sides are 



ioo Sights and Insights. 

worked as quarries for scores of miles. There is 
greater wealth in stone and ice than in all the rich 
blood of the grape. Fewer women were at work 
in the fields ; their homes were worthier of their 
care. Thus is shown the influence of the Protes- 
tant religion. For Catholicism bestows on one 
woman such adoration, that it absolves itself from 
respect to all the rest of womankind. I saw the 
change back again as I came to the Bohemian 
frontier, above Aussiz. Crosses stood by the road- 
side, and crowned the highest hills ; near by were 
thirty women in one field, and soon after a gang at 
work in a quarry, and another shoveling earth on 
a railway embankment. 

There is a very extensive commerce on the Elbe, 
hardly any on the Rhine. Enterprise, thrift, 
beauty, sublimity, combined in single pictures or 
succeeding each other in alternating visions, and 
crowded into a day of unusual beauty, have united 
to render this a day of richest experiences. 

A Pbague Picture. 

Lounging out into an open square at half past 
eight, just after getting into Prague, I saw a pict- 
ure somewhat novel. Before a monument, into 
which had been set a bedizened figure of the Vir- 
gin, illuminated by half a dozen candles, sat a 



A German Portfolio. 101 

priest, in citizen's dress, chanting, with forty Yan- 
kee nasal power, a mass. Occasionally he shook 
a quart cup that had a few kreutzers in it, as an 
invitation to the faithful to make further deposits. 
His musical accompaniment, copper rattled in tin, 
seemed to chime excellently with his voice. His 
manner was that of supreme indifference to every 
thing but the prospect of cash. His audience was 
made up mostly of the poorest class of women, 
kneeling on the hard stones beside their laid-off 
burdens. They joined occasionally in the chant, 
and continually inspected the new arrivals. A lady 
stood among them rather elegantly dressed. She 
was more studied than any Venus I have seen in 
all the. galleries of art I have visited in a fortnight. 
They went over her with hungry eyes, from head 
to foot, again and again. Some forgot chant and 
rosary in the inspection, and others not. Breath- 
ing a prayer to the Creator that he would hear all 
sincere praying, I turned away from what was a 
pretense of worship. O for another John Huss 
in Prague ! 




XIII. 

STRASBURG CATHEDRAL. 

ATHEDRALS have their individual char- 
acteristics as truly as their builders. 
The peculiarity of this one consists in 
having a kind of out-work of slender columns, 
arches, and inclosed niches, thrown like a vail of 
barred muslin over the front. In some places it 
nearly conceals the background of cathedral wall, 
and holds the eye in its entanglement of beauty. 
Especially when the westering sun casts the shad- 
ows of this projected out-work upon the main wall 
it seems doubled, and the real wall almost hidden. 
When one considers that this kind of work is car- 
ried up four hundred and sixty-six feet, the light, 
graceful, airy effect that is produced must be con- 
fessed to be indescribable. Into this delicate 
tracery crashed the shells and balls of the Ger- 
mans in 1870. Its effect can be imagined. You 
can stand in one spot and count where thirty shells 
struck the spire. They tore into this slender 
drapery ; they crashed through its gorgeous win- 
dows ; they smote interior columns, leaving great 



Strasburg Cathedral. 103 

ugly scars that time cannot heal. One made wild 
music in the organ, never intended by the builder ; 
and on the night of August 25, the roof over the 
vast church took fire. Streams of melted copper 
poured down the gutters, and spires of flame 
leaped up to vie with the tallest spire of stone man 
has ever erected. The flames ceased only when 
there was nothing more to burn. Still the French 
maintained a post of observation in the spire, and 
still the Germans rained their shells upon it. The 
very cross on the apex was hit, and saved from 
falling only by the lightning-rod. They say the 
building was struck by two hundred and fifty shells. 
The general effect is much less than might be 
expected. A careless observer might hardly notice 
any effect of the bombardment. The open work 

let the shells pass in to the solid stone and out 
again. You see, far up, part of a battlement gone, 
a pillar replaced by brick-work, and some light 
scantling where stone ought to be. To be sure, 
the roof is not yet replaced, but this is hardly no- 
ticeable from the ground, as the solid arches over 
the church were not affected by the destruction of 
the roof. The building teems with workmen, and 
soon most of the marks of war will be seen only 
by bright new stones that take the place of those 
injured. 



104 Sights and Insights. 

This magnificent structure has seen many perils, 
and survived them all. It has been shaken by- 
four earthquakes, struck by lightning, and more 
or less thrown down nine times — has been ravaged 
by fire five times — endured the Jacobin fury in 
1793, tearing down two hundred and thirty-seven 
of the statues, and proposing to treat its lofty spire 
as they treated the column in the Place Vendome 
in Paris eighty years later. But it stands in such 
wondrous perfection as to make one see the pro- 
priety of comparing God's spiritual work to a tem- 
ple. Begun long ago, it is not yet finished — room 
enough for new stones ; and none of it old. 

It stands where the Celts once had a Druidical 
forest, and offered human victims. The Romans 
built on the spot a temple to Hercules and Mars. 
One of the statues of the former still decorates 
the present building. Since 510 the site has been 
occupied by a Christian church. About 1015, one 
of those spasms of sacrifice seized the country, 
and from one to two thousand men toiled at the 
erection of this cathedral — not for pay, but for the 
salvation of their souls. Grander than sculptured 
frieze, lofty column, grand facade, and pinnacled 
spire, is the fact connected with nearly all these 
old cathedrals, that men toiled at their deep foun- 
dations, cut the hard stone into beauty, and lifted 



Strasburg Cathedral. 105 

it into its place for the good of their souls, for the 
joy of sacrifice. It sweetens much of the taint of 
blood that so deeply stains those ages. 

It is hard at first to reconcile one's ideas of a 
church with the multitude of possible and impos- 
sible animals that these old builders scattered over 
their structures. You may stand either on the 
north or south side and count, without moving, 
over thirty huge animals, with heads of bulls, dogs, 
bats, gnomes, and fiends, put on the most incon- 
ceivable bodies, and projecting two or three feet, to 
serve as ornaments and water-spouts. Some tear 
their jaws open with their hands, to let the water 
run out ; others are doubled up with a perpetual 
belly-ache ; others, again, have such an evident 
nausea, that a stream from the mouth is the most 
natural thing to be expected. They grin, leer, 
cock their heads one side, and seem to roar with 
pain day and night, century by century. Gothic 
seems the right word to apply to this style. But 
these old builders believed that imps thronged the 
churches, so they set them to service, always on 
the outside — made them bearers of water — set them 
to do menial work. But that grim humor, that ran 
almost wild in producing quaint images, could curb 
itself to carving the holy exaltation of an angel's 
face, or the tender sweetness of a child's. 



Io6 Sights and Insights. 

Something is needed for variety, where such an 
immense number of human statues are introduced. 
Eighteen equestrian statues will be needed to fill 
the niches on the front. A single portal has fifteen 
life-size statues, seventy groups of statues (of from 
two to five figures) twenty inches high, and so ad- 
mirably done that the Scripture scenes they rep- 
resent are recognizable at once ; besides ninety- 
six figures cut in bas-relief. In addition to all 
this statue-work, the pedestals, canopies, little an- 
imals, not over three inches long, and arabesque 
work, fine as a worsted thread, are too wonderful 
for description. Nothing short of a study should 
be given to these grand results of human thought 
and toil. All the best work, thought, feeling, and 
love of centuries crystallized in these glorious piles. 
What seems but a maze of meaningless marbles at 
first glance, marches out as the whole story of sin, 
redemption, and final glory, to him who patiently 
lingers to study and feel. These men were earnest, 
and full of the sublime gospel that they put into 
stone. Few in those ages could read the printed 
page ; but written in stone, the one object that tow- 
ered toward heaven, the first the sun kissed in the 
morning, and the last on which he smiled at night, 
every untaught peasant could read " that sweet 
story of old." And because we have learned other 



Strasburg Cathedral. 107 

languages, and have other pages to read, is no rea- 
son why we should be blind to what men felt in 
their hearts, slowly cut into stone, and set up to 
endure. There is often more power to stir feeling 
in a stone than in a page. Each truly holds, and 
yet utters what feeling was put into it. The very 
gates and stones of Jerusalem were precious to 
God and his people. So is every stone over which 
a human heart has brooded, till it has been 
warmed into life, and made to take the heart's 
meaning. How much more where millions have 
been builded into shapes of beauty and power. 

I have been to four churches to-day, besides 
the Cathedral. Various attractions were offered 
to fill the houses, and with various results. The 
first was a funeral. It was quite successful, for 
death has always a strong interest. Even the 
Christian hope only mitigates its severity, and 
leaves survivors suffering within the limits of en- 
durance. The next was royal congregational 
singing, with a great German volume of sound, 
and it succeeded pretty well. The next was the 
monumental church of St. Thomas. It had some 
of the most striking results of art, good preaching, 
and military patronage, in its favor. It was filled. 
The next was the Church of England service. 
There were twenty present. 



108 Sights and Insights. 

Then I went to the Cathedral. There was a 
dense mass of humanity, standing up and packed 
together; I could hardly wedge myself into it. 
The mass sweat and steamed. Every man took 
a Turkish bath in five minutes, without charge; 
stretched his neck, and stood on tip-toe. What 
in the world was it ? I could neither see nor hear 
any service. Soon I discovered. The cock was 
about to crow, and the puppets to march on the 
great clock. They did their work as they have 
done it every day at noon for years, and that 
crowd melted in a different sense from what it 
threatened to five minutes before. 

I advise every Church that has not full houses to 
get a wooden cock to crow at 10.30 a.m., and have 
the pastor begin immediately after. 



XIV. 

UNDER A SALT MOUNTAIN. 



<£i 



f HAVE just had a new sensation. Previously 
M I have explored the surface of the world, 
sailed on its rivers, climbed its mountains, and 
crossed its plains ; but to-day I have been down to 
the " waters under the earth." Ten o'clock found 
me walking through a long avenue lined on either 
side with magnificent trees, leading to the entrance 
of the salt mine at Berchtesgaden. Turning to the 
left, and stepping into the office, I bought a ticket 
of admittance, and was attired in proper costume- 
white pants, black sack coat, girdle, and cap. 
This, with a lantern carried in the hand or stuck 
in the belt, completed the equipment. The cos- 
tume of the ladies being the same, they were con- 
gratulated on obtaining their rights at last. Pre- 
ceded by a guide, we walked straight into the 
heart of the mountain twelve hundred feet, through 
a tunnel built of solid masonry. At the end we 
turned, and going up a flight of one hundred and 
twenty-six steps, came to the borders of a salt sea. 



no Sights ajtd Insights. 

It is quite large, and of an irregular shape, lighted 
at intervals by small lamps placed around the 
edge. These are so perfectly reflected in the calm 
water below as to appear like two rows. Two 
small boats were at the shore, and the silent boat- 
men standing by beckoned us to them. They 
might have resembled the boatmen of Charon for 
their silence and blackness, and the gloom of the 
still, dark water. Our own voices seemed so hol- 
low, and so out of place, that they were quickly 
hushed, and naught was heard save the ripple of 
the water against the prow of the boat, and the dip 
of the oars. As we approached the center, the 
sound of falling water was suddenly heard, and, 
turning, we discovered a fountain had burst up 
close by us. The streams lifted themselves up in 
the darkness, and, gleaming in the uncertain light 
a moment, fell again with as sweet a music as 
though playing in the bright sunshine above. Our 
silent boatmen rowed us away to the other side, 
and we were glad to be on land once more, even 
though it was under the surface. 

This water is brought into the mountain for the 
purpose of extracting the salt and rendering its 
transportation easy. It is conducted down to 
Berchtesgaden, and there pumped up over the hills, 
and allowed to run in pipes to Trauenstein, Rosen- 




jp-ii Interior of a Salt Mirie: The Slide. 



Under a Salt Mountain. 1 1 3 

heim, and other places more than thirty miles 
away. There the water is evaporated by allowing 
it to trickle down through cords of loose brush, 
built into high walls often five thousand feet long. 
Curiously enough, just before this brine becomes 
sufficiently evaporated to have the salt deposit 
itself in the solid form of cubic crystals, it is suf- 
ficiently evaporated to have the impurities crystal- 
lize and deposit themselves on the bushes, leav- 
ing the salt brine pure. The bushes then 
have the appearance of trees after a heavy fall 
of snow, when no wind has brushed it from the 
branches. 

A few steps away from the sea we came to a new 
way of getting down stairs. There was a smooth 
shoot, inclined at an angle of forty-five degrees ; 
seating ourselves in this, we slid to the bottom in 
two seconds. Hair flew, garments fluttered ; sus- 
picions of slivers flashed horribly upon us ; queries 
as to whether that deep blackness might not be 
bottomless were just starting into prominence, 
when the slope suddenly became less steep, and 
we reached the bottom. I wonder such sliding 
down stairs has not been introduced into every 
house. This descent brought us to another long 
archway, through which we passed, coming out in 
a large room where two men were at work. The 



1 14 Sights and Insights. 

walls were of rock salt, and in these they were 
drilling holes for blasting. We next came into a 
gallery from which we looked down into another 
excavation sixty feet below us. A second enjoy- 
able slide took us to the bottom. 

We then came to what is called the mineral cab- 
inet. Here was an arched entrance made of the 
translucent rock salt. Behind each block a lamp 
had been placed, the light of which shone through 
with a pure white, pale yellow, or delicate rose 
tint. Beyond this arch is a small recess of a semi- 
circular shape. At the back is a large block of 
pure white salt with a crown carved on the front 
and under it an J£, the initial of Ludwig, King 
of Bavaria, who is owner of the mine. In front 
of it is a small jet of the saltest water playing into 
a basin ornamented with stones found in the mine. 
Around the sides of the recess were pyramids 
formed of salt crystals and curiosities. 

Turning our backs on this beautiful exhibition, 
we found a carriage standing ready to take us out 
of the. mine. Not such a carriage as would be 
used in Central Park of New York, or the Champs 
Elysees of Paris, but one far better adapted to the 
place. It is a bench ten feet long, and mounted 
on a wheeled platform. I seated myself astride 
of it, and, drawn by the power of gravity, dashed 



Under a Salt Mountain. 115 

along the dark underground passages with such 
speed as extinguished the lights, and left us rum- 
bling on in darkness toward the door. We knew 
the passage was small ; we could touch either side 
as we rushed. How low it might be we had no 
means of judging. What perils lurked for us in 
that utter blackness, what trains we might meet, 
what accidents might occur, might be dreaded but 
not imagined. Suddenly we burst out into the 
light of day. 

How this vast mass of salt came here we should 
be glad to know. In Bex it forms a perpendicular 
vein, and baffles investigation. Elsewhere it often 
seems to be the residuum of dried-up seas, leaving 
in a solid mass all the salt the rivers brought from 
a continent. Three per cent, of the ocean is salt, 
accumulated in the long ages, by having every 
river bring what it has washed from the soil, and 
having none leave by evaporation. The whole 
amount would equal five times the mass of the 
Alps, stretching as they do, like crested billows of 
the sea, two hundred miles wide and one thousand 
miles long. Dry up a portion, and it would easily 
make a mountain of salt. 

Sprinkling a little dust of salt this evening on 
the butter that all Europe insists on giving you 
fresh, I fall into a little meditation on how much 



1 16 Sights and Insights. 

butter the salt taken out of those twelve miles of 
passages and sub-montane caverns would season. 
It comes to me that that one mine can produce 
but a small dust in the balance that weighs all the 
salt produced in the world. Men have consumed 
more than a whole mountain of salt. Europe, 
alone, uses five millions of tons in a single year. 
It is amazing, especially when we consider that it 
is as really rock as granite. Our two hundred men 
moiling under Hohe Gohl can only produce a 
six-thousandth of the whole. I wonder the 
whole race has not followed the example of Lot's 
wife. 

Yet I have a kind of fondness for this sparkling 
mineral. It is the emblem of the most delect- 
able Attic thought ; the pledge of the Arab's 
friendship ; the symbol of the preserving power 
of grace. I must knead a little more into this 
butter. 



XI. 

OVER THE SPLUGEN. 

fT is quite an experience to live through the 
varied history of a single day ; it has its silver 
dawn, bright noon, and golden close. It is 
more to absorb into one's permanent acquisitions 
all the fleeting impressions of a year. It has the 
irrepressible outburst of life in spring, the bloom 
of summer, the wealth of autumn, and the rest of 
winter. It is richer yet to pass from the intoxi- 
cating luxuriance within the tropics, where every 
spot of earth and every breath of air teems with 
exuberant life, to the frozen regions where only 
the hardiest animals are found, and only the 
lichens can embroider a feeble fringe on the robes 
of retreating winter. How much longer and 
richer is that experience that lives through human 
history and is familiar with its feelings, national 
peculiarities, loves, hates, the inspirations of lib- 
erty, the assumptions of tyranny, and the resultant 
struggles that have converted a thousand plains 
to battle-fields, and a thousand mountains to 

strongholds, held desperately by a handful when 

8 



n8 Sights and Insights. 

assaulted as desperately by armies. But how 
much longer and richer is that experience that 
embraces the evolutions of the geological eons. 
It begins with feeling the moving of the Spirit of 
God on the formless void ; it hears the first, " God- 
said ; " it is present at the grand setting up of 
suns and planets ; hears the world's ribs crack, and 
feels its whole frame tremble as the mountains are 
raised and the dry land appears ; it sees the earth's 
crust modified through primary, secondary, and 
tertiary developments ; the beginning and develop- 
ment of life in a million grades ; and it feels the 
grand pulses of the life of God beating with in- 
cessant throb, from that first stir in the darkness, 
up to the last thrill of a loving soul that is leaping 
to the love of God. 

There is one place where, to the extent of a man's 
ability to feel, all these experiences may be crowded 
into a single day ; and that place is an Alpine pass. 
He begins with the gray of dawn, and the golden 
curtains of evening are gathered about his repose. 
He pants in the summer heat in the first hours of 
his journey, but he puts his feet on eternal snows, 
and breathes the chill breaths that come from the 
glaciers before night. There is no exuberance of 
life that does not riot in tropic Italy as he leaves 
it ; no barrenness of the poles that does not frown 



Over the Splugen. 1 1 9 

around him as he stands on the summit. In his 
way he marks where the inspirations of the liberty 
of these high peaks have held these passes against 
hordes of the minions of despotism, where ava- 
lanches have sent whole columns down sunless 
abysses, and where has bloomed for centuries that 
last consummate flower of human government — a 
republic. 

But he is especially able to condense into a sin- 
gle day all geologic eons. He can put his hand 
on the product of the primeval fire in the splin- 
tered granite of these peaks. The immense lime- 
stone products of the world buttress these tall 
Alps on both sides. The Jura chain lies right in 
sight, as the hugest exponent of the limestone 
period. Between it and the central chain lie vast 
conglomerates. The diluvial periods are at work 
yet, with inconceivable power, in a hundred 
mountain torrents and untamable rivers. Many 
a smiling valley has been converted into a desert 
of sand, gravel, and boulders, in a single night. 
When a gorge takes a frolic, and the torrent tears 
the rocks from their bed, and tumbles the pile down 
a few thousand feet, the hugest rocks are pulver- 
ized and spread over acres in an hour. I have seen 
rocks fifteen feet in diameter that had been tossed 
like pebbles in the past four years ; and ten feet 



120 Sights and Insights. 

of broken rock that had been shoveled into a 
man's back yard only a few days before. And 
that great breaking-up plow, the glacier, is still 
turning its huge furrows among the granite 
boulders and pulverizing them to dust. Yes, 
to the extent of his ability, a man condenses the 
widest experiences into a single day in the Alps. 

But let us come to particulars. Passing by 
scenery that would make the reputation of any 
country but Switzerland, we enter the via mala. 
Its first gate-post is fifteen hundred feet high ; 
nearly a third of a mile. Think of such a distance 
each side of you, and then raise it to the perpen- 
dicular on either hand. Down the steep gorge 
roars the young Rhine ; up it creeps the winding 
road. You soon find yourself above the top of 
that tall gate-post, overlooking its summit to the 
plain below. A stone dropped perpendicular from 
the low parapet of the road consumes six seconds 
in reaching the river. The roar of its dashing has 
sunk to a whisper, but the smoke of its torment in 
that tortuous glen rises forever. The rocks show 
every sign of the power that raised and cleft them. 
They are torn, split, twisted, and puckered, their 
strata contorted, and left as evidence of the power 
that took up these islands as a very little thing. 

Just at this point we find that twenty feet of the 



Over the Splugen. 121 

road has slipped down the fearful declivity into the 
river. A few light fir-trees have been put across, 
and some boughs and dirt laid on. Had I seen it 
before being right on the swaying structure, I 
should have preferred trusting myself on it alone, 
instead of being in company with five horses and 
a lumbering diligence. I think every one added 
the weight of a cubic foot of air as he looked 
over the unprotected side into the river so far 
below. 

The road frequently leaps the ravine at a single 
bound. A mile from Rongellen the chasm is so 
narrow that the river, three hundred feet below, is 
sometimes lost from view by reason of the crook- 
edness of the walls. In 1834 the water filled the 
whole depth of three hundred feet, and foamed 
and dashed almost against the bridge. You cease 
to wonder that the road climbs such airy heights 
and clings to such dizzy precipices, when you see 
what a fierce and insurrectionary enemy ever lies 
in wait for its destruction. 

These high mountains have afforded ample field 
for the development of engineering. And the old 
Romans, who tramped the hills and valleys of three 
continents into roads, have been admirable ex- 
amples and instructors in the art. 

Road-making is a science peculiar to this coun- 



122 Sights and Insights. 

try. Fair, smooth places must often be avoided, 
and the perpendicular precipice chosen, for the 
avalanche sweeps the one irresistibly, but over- 
shoots the other. Where these avalanche-swept 
places cannot be avoided the road is buried under 
sloping roofs for hundreds of feet, that shoot the 
falling mass into the valley below. 

Having passed the summit we came to the Car- 
dinal Gorge. In December, 1818, General Mac- 
donald led a division of troops this way to Italy. 
A severe snow-storm came on, and the swift ava- 
lanches swept the path again and again, hurling 
whole columns of men down the abyss. It was an 
enemy they could not fight. Slowly they plodded 
on, and, without warning to eye or ear, a wide 
gap of death would be opened in their line. 
There were no wounded to pick up, no fire to be 
returned, no shouts to be uttered ; but they must 
walk on, silently awaiting their fate. For ten 
days this army of fifteen thousand men struggled 
on, clinging like insects to the mountain side, far 
above all vegetation, pierced with wild winds, 
dying of cold, always breast-deep in snow, often 
blinded by its whirling mist, never for a moment 
certain of another hour. 

A better road has been chosen on the other side, 
but even there it has to be protected by sheds for 



Over the Splugen. 123 

nearly three fifths of a mile. The descent into 
that gorge to Isola is something grand. Just be- 
fore we commence it we pause at the Medesimo 
waterfall, which leaps clear at one bound seven 
hundred feet. The road has been constructed 
right down the face of that precipice. Much of 
the way it is only wide enough for a single car- 
riage ; and you have no idea how narrow that 
seems, with a thousand feet precipice below you. 
It is about half blasted out of the rock, and half 
rests on a wall built to its height. It doubles back 
and forth in short zigzags, the inner wall of one 
road being the outer wall of the one above. There 
is a railing on the outside, made of seven by eight 
inch wooden posts, and two three by four inch 
rails. The bugle rings its shrill warning that none 
venture up the road. The conductor goes to the 
break. The driver yells like mad, and cracks his 
whip like fourth of July. The horses know their 
work; they tear down these fearful declivities at 
the top of their speed. Two rods ahead is a preci- 
pice of a thousand feet. Just as their noses reach 
it, the break brings all to a halt. They spring 
round with their slanted feet among the posts, and, 
like a parcel of wild cattle, come almost parallel 
with the body of the coach. The break is loos- 
ened, and we whirl on a new departure. My seat 



124 Sights and Insights. 

is in the banquette, a seat that rises high and pro- 
jects far behind the rear wheels. It is the place 
of the last boy in the game of "snap the whip." 
Several times the hind wheels swing round so vehe- 
mently as to slip toward the verge of the precipice. 
I am switched round where I can look down a 
thousand feet, and think of Macdonald's army. 
Were this my first experience of the kind, my hair, 
limber as it is, would stand on end. As it is, I 
stand up and shout as I would at a camp-meeting. 
I lean out from my perch, and gather summer 
flowers, just as, an hour before, I reached for 
snow-balls from the tunneled drifts. 

Soon we come to a long Latin inscription, re- 
cording when this road was built and by whom. 
And the work is worthy of record. Man blazons 
the fact that he is able to creep up one of these 
thousand precipices a little way, and thus tells the 
story of his power. God's power is written all 
over these heights. He set up these columns 
where men might blast a thousand years and 
hardly make a mark that an angel would notice 
in flying over. He lays up these reservoirs a 
mile above us, and pours these cataracts abun- 
dant for a thousand years as for a day. He 
rolls these rivers on the earth, but a broader 
one, to keep them full, in the air above. " Mar- 



Over the Splugen. 125 

velous are Thy works ; and that my soul knoweth 
right well." 

I went to a cemetery yesterday, about the only 
one I know of that is not likely to be disturbed. 
It might have been supposed that Cheops would 
rest in peace under his mountain, or that Pompeii 
had been sufficiently buried. But Cheops' mount- 
ain was a magnet that drew the spoiler and curios- 
ity-hunter from the most distant lands, and the 
city of the dead is the busiest part of Italy. I 
read, when a boy, of the avalanche in the beautiful 
valley of Bregaglia, that buried the city of Plurs 
so utterly that no single soul escaped, nor has a 
single relic ever been discovered. The inhabit- 
ants had been abundantly warned, earth-slides 
had taken place for a period of two weeks. The 
very day before large rocks left their dizzy 
perches and bounded into the valley. Even the 
domestic animals showed great fear, and could 
scarcely be driven to their accustomed pastures 
on the heights. But the men had grown careless 
in the midst of danger. They clung to their pos- 
sessions despite the imminent peril. In an instant, 
at midnight, the mountain side gave way, and 
buried them under sixty feet of broken masses 
of rock. All attempts to penetrate it were in vain. 
Of the two thousand four hundred and thirty 



126 Sights and Insights. 

inhabitants no single one was exhumed, and prob- 
ably never will be till the archangel blows the 
last trump. 

I walked up from Chiavenna in the calm and 
beauty of an Italian Sabbath. The spot is easily 
discovered, though nature has done its best to con- 
ceal its work. To-day a large growth of chestnut 
trees covers the accumulated soil. Far up the 
mountain we recognize the site of the resistless 
rock avalanche, but it is covered with vines and 
flowers that sweeten the passing breeze. The 
cascades leap merrily down where they started the 
mountain side into the valley. And the musical 
Maira winds among the huge rocks that rolled far 
beyond the town, and very materially raised its 
bed. It was fittingly quiet for a cemetery. 




XVI. 

ADLESBERG CAVERN. 

USKIN- says, " It is better to live in a hut, 
and have Windsor Castle to be astonished 
at, than live in Windsor Castle and have 
nothing to be astonished at ! " Well, I must get 
out of these sublime Alps into Holland, or some 
other flatness, or pay the penalty of living in the 
last degree of astonishment. I will let a few pict- 
ures come for an hour, that so haunt me, that they 
appear whenever a quiet moment gives them leave 
to enter. 

They pretend to have a Mammoth Cave in the 
Julian Alps; and perhaps .it is as mammoth as 
could be expected in Europe. I went to its door 
the other morning. There was a swift river, four 
rods wide, too deep to wade and too shoal to swim, 
running straight into a mountain. And when I 
remembered, that river appeared again twelve 
miles from there, a navigable stream at the point 
of its appearance, I began to feel my expectations 
materially enlarge. I do not care to remember 



128 Sights and Insights. 

that I walked five miles in the cave ; went over 
huge hills ; stood under domes from two hundred 
to four hundred feet high, and six hundred feet 
across ; that I came to ancl went over the same 
rushing river ; but I do care to remember always 
what kind of a workshop God's forces work in, and 
what works they produce. 

To say that this is a stalactite and stalagmite 
cavern, in a limestone formation, means little. Let 
* us try what more words can do. We have, first, a 
mountain ; and let us not set before us a hill, but 
an Alp thrown up, and its central substance some- 
what fissured and possibly somewhat caverned by 
the upheaval. Then there must be abundant 
water finding its way through, slowly saturating 
itself with the limestone, and passing out, carry- 
ing through decades of centuries the dissolved 
rock, and leaving the cavern. Then we must have 
less abundant water, percolating the mountain from 
above, and dropping at a million points from the 
roof to the floor. Now, in some places we observe 
stalactites, like icicles, hanging from above ; in 
some, stalagmites rising from the floor; in some 
places, both ; and in many, neither. 

This is easily accounted for, if we consider the 
different amounts of water, and the different dry- 
ing ability of the air in different places. For ex- 



Adlesberg Cavern. 129 

ample : When the saturated solution of lime-water 
drips from above, if the air can evaporate all the 
water without its dropping to the floor, all the lime 
will be deposited above, and we have only stalac- 
tites. If no water is evaporated above, but is 
below, we have only stalagmites ; if evaporated 
from both, we have both. If there is too much 
water to be evaporated beyond a saturated solu- 
tion, we have neither. If the water drop from an 
area two feet in diameter, we have a corresponding 
large result ; if from a single point, we may have 
formations slender as our finger, and of any length 
that can be supported in a perpendicular position. 
If, however, there be too much water to be evap- 
orated at a single point, it may run over a larger 
surface. 

In one place I observed them all standing or 
hanging at a slight angle. I suppose the current 
of air to have moved regularly through, dried one 
side, and built out against the wind. One had in- 
clined enough to catch the drippings of another 
place, and a stalagmite was erecting itself on an in- 
clined stalactite. In another plac e the roof inclined 
at an angle of about forty-five degress. Down this 
incline meandered a gentle rill, never dropping at 
all. The result was a wide curtain, with intricate 
folds, not thicker than heavy upholstery, and yards 



1 30 Sights and Insights. 

long. But most curiously, the lime-water was at 
different times tinctured with some other substance. 
In one place it was iron, and a strip of red, half an 
inch wide, was added to the length through all 
the intricate foldings of the curtain. Then the iron 
ceased, and the pure white lime appeared again. 
All these formations are translucent, and a light 
held behind them produces an effect never to be 
forgotten. 

Here you stand in the very laboratory of God ; 
you hear the quiet drip of his agents. In one 
place, the point above, that has been reaching 
in the dark for the point below has just met, and 
the long-delayed marriage taken place. In an- 
other place they lack the breadth of a finger. 
Elsewhere, the column is ten or twelve feet in di- 
ameter from base to capital. When you ask for the 
length of the process that opens the cavern, and 
then slowly sets up the columns, you find that the 
droppings of the last thirteen years have added 
only the thickness of paper to the previous mass. 
Imagination grows dizzy after calculation has 
failed. You can only say, "Thy years, O God, 
have no end." 

I have only hinted at the vast variety of forms. 
Statues start out of the darkness at your elbow; 
forms of animals suggest themselves; cascades 



A dies berg Cavern. 131 

pour ceaselessly that have been frozen to stillness ; 
pulpits, chapels, arcades, prison-bars, constantly 
appear. Sometimes the surface is dead white ; 
sometimes crystallized into a million facets, that 
look like forty bushels of diamonds. As I remem- 
ber the grand illumination of one of the great halls, 
I fear there is nothing of that kind to be aston- 
ished at till I see the walls and streets of Jerusalem 
the golden. 



XVII. 

ALP-LIFE. 

J I HAVE felt a touch of sadness stealing over 
^ me at times to-day, something, I suppose, like 
an east wind to a rheumatic ; and when I 
asked for the cause, it was manifest that it was be- 
cause I had left the Alps behind me. It may 
seem strange that men get so strongly attached to 
the Alps. You often meet men who have visited 
them every year for a dozen years. Alp-climbing 
grows into a passion. Men peril their lives on icy 
slopes, over crevasses, and on rocky precipices, 
and then return to them again with fresh delight. 
These are not boastful, arrogant men, seeking the 
bubble reputation by the narration of the difficult 
feats; but quiet, unobtrusive men, whose feats 
you hear of from others, not themselves. The 
various Alpine clubs contain large numbers of 
clergymen and men of science. If you ask why 
they turn to such peril for pleasure, and such toil 
for rest, they might answer somewhat on this 
wise : — 



Alp-Life. 133 

There is a delicious freedom in tossing his few- 
pounds of baggage over his shoulders and step- 
ping off into unknown paths, where he may not 
meet a fellow-being all day long. There is room to 
shout, sing, or be quiet. The hedging in of the 
city is broken down. He feels kindred to the 
bird that hangs motionless above the entrancing 
landscape, or leaps along his airy pathway, setting 
wide miles of air to quivering with the thrilling 
music it seems to shake from its wings. He cares 
no more for trains and appointments than the bee 
that buzzes wing-deep in the scented dust of the 
flowers. This unprecedented variety that sur- 
rounds him is assurance against the cloying of his 
appetite. He wades out of knee-deep grasses and 
flowers into the fir woods, straight as shafts of light, 
goes out of these to the bare rocks, and off these to 
scarcely less hard snows and ice. He is never 
without bright landscapes, crossed with great black 
shadows of trees, rocks, and mountains. His 
" light and shade " is not Bierstadt's, sixteen by 
eighteen inches, flat as a board, and dull as 
painted light ; it is huge as the eye can sweep, 
molded by mountains and bright as sunlight. 
Then, too, the landscapes are never alike. He 
never says that such a view, mountain, or water- 
fall is like another. God has given variety to 



134 Sights and Insights. 

vastness, and never, like us shallow mortals, re- 
peats himself. 

I have now been over fourteen passes in the 
Alps, from the height of Mount Washington to 
nearly twice its height, some of them several 
times. But so far from finding sameness, every 
one appears different, and I would gladly turn 
back to-day to go over these, or fourteen more. 

Even the flowers, in which God seems to repeat 
himself, are in endless variety. Sometimes a high 
slope will be shimmered over with the Alpine 
roses, like a bright blush spreading over a brown 
cheek. Then one meets whole fields of blue, far 
up under the blue sky ; charming little forget-me- 
nots, bells, and fringed gentians bursting up in the 
very footsteps of retreating snows ; and in some 
instances a single flower will come up through a 
little hole in the snow, hardly large enough to give 
it standing room ; and at other times whole fields 
of them will be covered with the snows of the 
night. They look cold and shivering in the morn- 
ing, but they bravely wait till relieved by those 
that spring forward to take their places. Some- 
times there is a bed of greenest moss, and some- 
times a little plot of flowers, standing so thickly 
together that there is absolutely no space between 
them. 



Alp-Life. 135 

" Flower of starry clearness bright ! 
Quivering urn of colored light ! 
Hast thou drawn thy cup's rich dye 
From the intenseness of the sky ? " 

But perhaps that which charms him most is his 
own sense of exuberant life. He partakes of the 
life that nothing can daunt. Men who have crept 
wearily along flag-stones, spring and leap among 
rocks, feeling as if their limbs were iron and their 
sinews steel. Professor Tyndall writes that he felt 
that his life-work was almost done at one time ; 
but faltering out in his trembling weakness, he 
breasted a mountain till he washed his blood clean 
of all the taints of London air in the oxygen of 
upper Alps, and felt life renewed. A glorious 
sense of power comes to a man as he stands on a 
precipice, leaps chasms, or climbs mountains, and 
not a nerve quivers, or a muscle asks for rest. 

He has come where he can see the sky. And 
that is more of a sight than most of us denizens of 
the city know. No wonder it is said " The morn- 
ing and the evening were the day." A rare writer 
says, " Always look out for the sunset." What- 
ever gloom or weariness may have filled the toilful 
day, there is always a gleam of brightness for its 
close. It is like the cheery smile of the mother 
before she removes the light and leaves the 
children in the dark. 



136 Sights and Insights. 

Our civilization compels us to be resting when 
God is creating a new day — when he says, morn- 
ing by morning, "let there be light." Not so 
with the Alp-climber. All these gorgeous decora- 
tions are for him. He is interested in their mean- 
ings. He does not read his weather " probabili- 
ties " in a line of black ink. They are written in 
the gorgeousness of sunrise. His signals are hung 
like banners from the mountains, vast trailing 
streamers that the sun flushes with crimson, bathes 
with pure light, or leaves dark and dun. Then 
comes a breath of wind, and these seas of feathery 
foam go swirling over mountain summits, whirling 
in vast spirals, and plunging in airy cataracts. He 
stands between two worlds, buried in neither, and 
both are his. 

Hardly anywhere else does he feel so much with 
God. These mountains are too large to spell any 
other name. These torrent and avalanche voices 
are too loud to utter any other word. These bil- 
lowy forests seem swept with flying waves of 
light and shade by no other hand. And these vast 
ice rivers, moving as if eternal years were theirs, 
speak of no one but the Eternal. Almighty forces 
are around him in full play. He sees no work of 
man, but work of God, vast, grand, and irresist- 
ible, on every side. He sees where mountains 



Alp-Life. 137 

have been tossed like bubbles, where rocky strata 
hundreds of feet thick have been folded like paper, 
where the strength of the hills has been broken 
and valleys dug without machinery. He might be 
affrighted. But there are the lilies of the fields in 
their splendor, and the unforgotten sparrows of 
the air, to assure him that God's power is as 
minute as it is vast. So he lies down in God's 
hand, or leaps or shouts with a consciousness of 
being filled with his power. 

The other day I wanted a guide, and one was 
sent to me. 

" Do you know the way over such a pass ? " 

"Yes, sir, very well." 

" Show me your book ? " 

Here were many recommendations, any one 
good enough ; but I saw the name of a friend. The 
handwriting was as familiar as if it had arrived 
that day from America. He said, " This man is a 
good guide. He knows his business, and does it. 
You may trust him." I did, closed the book, and 
said, " I engage you." That night he had my feet 
shod with iron points, and before daylight I was 
following him down a fearful precipice. He went 
before, showed me where to put my feet. I trusted 
him. We came to the chasms in the glaciers ; they 
were wide, deep, and cold as graves. I looked in 



138 Sights and Insights. 

his earnest face, saw his grip on the rope around 
my waist, thought he could draw me out if I fell 
in, remembered the sure nails he had put in my 
shoes, and leaped to him. We climbed icy slopes, 
where the guide cut every step, and where I could 
only put my feet by his direction. I momentarily 
trusted him, and he brought me to a glorious 
height, and showed me visions of far kingdoms and 
scenes of entrancing beauty. At the close of the 
day I found myself in sunny Italy. The streams 
sang sweetly, the flowers scented the air, luxuriant 
summer laughed on every side. All the cold snows, 
rocky roads, icy graves, and hard toils were far be- 
hind. I had trusted my guide, and not in vain. 

I need another guide. He comes. I ask if 
He knows all the way, and he tells me he has 
been over it all, knows every step. He gives 
me his book. Here are thousands of recom- 
mendations, all good ; but I see one from my 
own mother, who tried him many years. She says 
I may trust him. I do ; and find my feet shod 
with a suitable preparation. We go along fearful 
slopes, across slippery places ; I feel that my feet 
had well-nigh slipped ; I hear him say of others, 
their foot shall slide in due time ; but he holds me 
up. We come to deep, cold graves, but he has 
power to lift me over, or even draw me out. He 



Alp -Life. 139 

has led the way up many a hill of difficulty, 
avoided all the precipices, and brought me to the 
mountains of vision. When I come to the dark 
valley he will meet me. I shall recognize his 
familiar voice, feel his strong grasp, feel assured 
as he tells me he knows the way, has been through 
it alone, and guided millions safely. Then we 
shall come into the beautiful land, and find friends 
waiting where the waters of life go softly ; and 
all the cold snows, rocky roads, icy graves, and 
hard toils will be far behind. 

I have been out this evening to look at half a 
dozen snow peaks, crimson in the setting sun, piled 
like clouds above the horizon, taking on various 
tints as easily and brightly as clouds ; but they are 
nearly fifty miles away. Shall I ever say, 

"Ye crags and peaks, I'm with you once again?" 




XVIII. 

VENERABLE VENICE. 

'OUR pleasure in visiting nature depends 
very much upon the mood in which you find 
her. I know of no face that is so much im- 
proved by a good washing as hers. There are 
smiling landscapes, frowning skies, laughing 
brooks, growling winds, and angry seas. Your 
pleasure is greatly modified by finding an Alp 
shooting its clean white wedge up into an unfathom- 
able blue sky, or finding fleets of cloud wrecking 
themselves on the rocks just above you, and scatter- 
ing their myriad fragments on your drenched head. 
I caught Venice in her best mood. I noticed, 
as I came out into the Piazza of San Marco, that 
peculiar light that betokens a gorgeous sunset. I 
instantly raced up the zigzag inclines of the Cam- 
panile, and three hundred feet above Venice 
looked out on Italy. The wind was blowing 
fearfully; the long lines of white breakers marked 
every contact of the islands with the Adriatic ; 
and the old tower very perceptibly trembled and 
shook in the wrestlings of the blast. A thunder- 



Venerable Venice. 141 

storm was sweeping from the east along the chain 
of the Alps at the north. The dark column as- 
saulted peak after peak, with more than the thun- 
derings and shoutings of war, carried height after 
height, changing, step by step, light, beauty, and 
glory to darkness and desolation. It seemed an 
advancing army. But as it neared the sun its 
darkness was scattered, its portentous masses were 
halted, and suffused with the glory of a sunset. 
Peace hung its gorgeous banners over the dark 
billows, and the rainbow gave token that God was 
in the storm. 

Then the five great bells of the tower began to 
peal. They made a perfect canopy of sound. It 
seemed like a real brazen sonance, constantly 
shaken down and constantly renewed. Then all 
the bells of the city answered, sending up acres 
of sound to meet tons from above. It really 
seemed as broad and weighty as the terms imply. 
Thus they celebrated the sunset. 

The inscription on the great bell at Schaffhau- 
sen, cast before America was discovered, " vivos 
voco, mortuos filango, fulgura frango"* embodied 
the belief of the Middle Ages; and in Venice, 
with the wind blowing as if the prince of the power 

* I call the living, I mourn the dead, I break the light- 
ning. 



142 Sights and Insights. 

of the air was let loose, and all the imps of dark- 
ness hurling thunderbolts so near the city, they 
rung their bells as if they believed it yet. Suc- 
cess certainly followed, if it did not result from 
their efforts. 

Soon after, the band commenced to play down 
in the piazza, and I waited up among the familiar 
stars to listen to the delicious music. 

Venice Lotteries. 

Italian gambling by lotteries is managed by the 
Government. There is, therefore, much red tape 
about it ; and one of the most interesting things I 
know of is a fine example of involved, compli- 
cated, intertwined, convoluted red tapeism. The 
solar system is simplicity to it : and the reason is, 
the solar system was made for revolution, order, 
and accomplishment. The other system was made 
for circumlocution, order, and no accomplish-" 
ment. I always study an example when I have 
time. 

The passion for gambling among the Italians 
is ineradicable. It has been bred in the bone of 
many generations. Some make their fortunes by 
prophesying what will be lucky numbers. One 
would think the shorter way would be to buy the 
lucky numbers themselves. O no! they had 



Venerable Venice. 143 

rather sell the fortunes to their friends, and take a 
few francs only for their own use. But the friends 
are sold, not the fortunes. Another example of 
generosity. A man buys a ticket for, say twenty 
francs. He immediately issues one hundred shares 
in the prize the ticket is to draw, and sells them at 
half a franc each. You are frequently beset by 
boys having these shares at prices as low as two 
cents a share. 

I was present at the drawing to-day. It took 
place in the great square of San Marco. It was so 
arranged that every one could see that there was 
fair play. A priest used to preside, and pro- 
nounce his blessing upon it, in the good old time ; 
but the present Government has deprived them of 
this, among other rights which descended to them 
from St. Peter. 

An officer shows to the crowd a five inch square 
piece of paper, having number one printed upon 
it. He then sends it to another officer, who rolls 
it up, and inserts it in a paper cylinder six inches 
long, having rounded ends. It is then passed to 
another officer, received on a silver salver, carried 
to the lottery wheel, and by another superintend- 
ent of fair play is deposited therein. 

This monotonous proceeding goes on till ninety- 
nine numbers are thus deposited in a wire net- 



144 Sights and Insights. 

work barrel. It is then revolved, ended over, and 
tumbled about on its axle, till all are thoroughly 
mixed. Then a boy is sent up by the crowd to 
draw, with naked arm, a single cylinder, which is 
passed round in reverse order, till its number is 
shown to the crowd by the man that first held them 
up. Then comes another shaking and drawing. I 
first thought it unutterably tedious ; but it has its 
advantages ; it gives employment to the ennuy'e 
officials ; it keeps up expectation a long time in 
the crowd. They have as long a delight as a 
giraffe is supposed to have in a gustatory morsel. 
Every body takes down the lucky numbers, some 
to purchase the same, and some to avoid them 
next time. It has not yet been discovered which 
is the more lucky. 

Not being greatly interested in the process of 
drawing, or the numbers drawn, I faced the crowd. 
That interested me. There were hundreds of 
men, women, and boys : women that had no bon- 
nets, never had, but they had tickets ; men that 
had very few clothes, but they had plenty of tick- 
ets and rags; boys that never had a clean face, but 
they had tickets. 

I could not discover that any one drew any 
thing that day, except the officials. They drew 
their salaries. As the crowd began to disperse, a 



Venerable Venice. 145 

half-blind beggar asked that, for the sake of the 
blessed Virgin, I would give him some bread. 
He had eaten nothing all day. I called his at- 
tention to his half a pocket full of tickets. He 
did not seem to think them very nutritious. Nor 
did I. 

I shall never be guilty of attempting to describe 
in words pictures gorgeous in color, nor statues 
marvelous in form. God expresses himself in 
color from violets to sunsets, and in forms from 
the infinitesimal to the infinite, but not in poor, 
barren words. I shall always see in my picture 
gallery Titian's marvelous " Assumption of Mary," 
and Thorwaldsen's Hercules hurling Lycias from 
the crags. The mad old giant has caught his vic- 
tim by one ankle with his right hand, and by the 
hair with his left, has slung him, head downward, 
over his shoulder, and is just springing forward to 
add force to his arm. The fixed face, heaped-up 
muscle, and rushing attitude of the god, compel 
you to wait in confident expectation of seeing that 
flaccid form flung a thousand miles. 



XIX. 

MILAN CATHEDRAL. 

[AKE a large-sized church, eighty-six feet by 
sixty feet, and put another at the end of 
it. Add another, and another, and then two 
more. Then add a church of the same size to the 
side of the first one, and keep doing so until you 
have five in breadth. That makes ten in all. 
Add eight more, to complete the hollow square. 
Then put a dozen into the center, and you repre- 
sent the area of the Milan Cathedral by thirty 
churches each eighty-six by sixty feet. 

But we must not leave it looking as flat as a 
freight shed: lift up its roof. It has" been done 
till few steeples in our country would be tall 
enough to use as posts for a scaffolding inside. 
The roof is of marble, only marble, and marble 
continually. It is supported at its vast height by 
marble columns. Conceive a marble trunk eight 
feet in diameter, rising score after score of feet, 
and this clustered round with small columns eight 
inches in diameter ; and at intervals a circle of 
statues encompassing the whole structure, till at 



Milan Cathedral. 147 

the height of seventy-two feet the enormous tree 
puts out its branches from among statues in can- 
opied niches of exceeding beauty, and spreads far 
above, an umbrageous roof. Such a column raised 
in any city would be a fitting memorial to any man, 
however great, or any event, however important. 
But here are fifty-two of them in, as mere supports 
to something grander, a marble grove with marble 
roof. 

That is just it, for the forest, God's first temple, 
with its endless variety of column, arch, and orna- 
ment, is the type of gothic architecture. It 
sprung out of man's religious feeling, and has in- 
spiration and aspiration in it. The Greek did not 
so spring, and has neither. Two perpendicular 
columns with a horizontal lintel across is the unit 
and type of the Greek. Limitation is its key- 
note; liberty is the key-note of the gothic. 
Straight lines confine the Greek in ground plan, 
rising wall, and roof if it has any. Every con- 
ceivable variety of nook, recess, and projection, 
marks the ground plan of the gothic. Every pos- 
sible shape of wall, curve of arch, roof as billowy 
as the forest top, and perfect prodigality and vari- 
ety of ornament, give room for the widest scope 
of genius in the gothic. 

All books warn you not to form too great ex- 



148 Sights and Insights. 

pectations about the grandeur of St. Peter's ; they 
foretell too truly your first disappointment. They 
give no such warning about our gothic cathedral 
at Milan. You stand amid its immense pillars, ex- 
amine its forty windows gorgeous as the rainbow, 
filled with paintings of nearly every event in Script- 
ure history, you look at its seven thousand statues, 
and, as the great organ makes the vast interior 
pulse and throb with music, you exclaim, " Surely 
this is none other than the house of God, and the 
gate of heaven." 

I cannot ask you to look at the peculiar treasures 
of the church. It pretends to have one of the 
holy nails used in the crucifixion. It really has 
colossal silver statues of San Carlo Borromeo and 
St. Ambrose. It has chalices, busts, shrines, can- 
dlesticks, and an endless quantity of precious ob- 
jects of pure silver, gold, and precious stones. 
To such an extent have these valuables been gath- 
ered, that the treasures of a single little chapel of 
a few feet in extent have an intrinsic value of eight 
hundred thousand dollars. Neither can I describe 
the front, decorated with twelve spires, two hundred 
statues, and a sculptured representation of so many 
scenes of sacred history. The carving of birds, in- 
sects, fruits, leaves, vines, and trees, defies descrip- 
tion. Let us go to the roof. 



Milan Cathedral. 149 

You put five hundred stairs under your feet, and 
amazement increases at every step. You stand in 
a vast area of dazzling marble. You look dizzily 
down at human insects creeping about in the pi- 
azza below. A man is a very small thing when 
seen from above, as the angels see him. It must 
take a perfect obedience to make them ministering 
spirits to him. Around you are the historic plains 
of Lombardy. Here our modern ideas of civil 
liberty had birth. Here Barbarossa sought to 
strangle them in their cradle. He did not know 
that liberty could so inspire the heart and nerve 
the arm as to make men glad to die in her defense. 
But he learned his lesson, and hurried back over 
the Alps into his own Germany. 

Look at those snowy Alps away to the north. 
They hardly seem to belong to the earth. They 
are up in the heavens. They blush crimson with 
the first flush of sunlight, then stand pure white. 

But let us come back to the eighth wonder of 
the world. Notice seventy-six marble pictures 
cut in bas-relief over the doors that lead through 
the flying buttresses. Every one is so well done 
you can tell at once what it represents. See the 
one hundred and fifty-two little cherubs in every 
conceivable posture, constituting the brackets that 
support these pictures over the doors. Wherever 

10 



150 Sights and Insights. 

you turn there are little statues perfect enough for 
any mantel in the most elegant parlor. Delicate 
arabesques are hidden away in corners, where only 
the eye of the patient explorer may find them : 

Within and without the builders wrought with care, 
For God's eye seeth every- where. 

Sculptured battlements rise on every side. Fly- 
ing buttresses, with beautifully cut open work, 
pass over your head. Three thousand ornaments 
rise from the upper surface of these buttresses on 
one side of the building; and they are cut into 
the forms of fruit and flowers with such incredi- 
ble prodigality of genius that no two of them are 
alike. 

A hundred and thirty-six lofty spires rise from the 
roof, each decorated with twenty-five statues set in 
ornamented niche, and under decorated canopy. 
The eye climbs up from cusp to cusp, till it reaches 
the statue that is loftily perched on each airy pinna- 
cle. And, standing there in the midst of thou- 
sands of praying and praising forms, some of 
angels that seem to have just alighted, others of 
martys that seem just leaving their tribulation for 
triumph, we can but exclaim, " We are come to 
Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, 
the heavenly Jerusalem, to the general assembly 



Milan Cathedral. 15 l 

and Church of the first-born, which are written 
in heaven, and to an innumerable company of 
^angels." 

How I would like to take down the form of 
Mary, that surmounts the highest spire, and lift 
up there the form of Christ. Then these descend- 
ing angels and ascending men would all be in har- 
mony with the truth, and every eye turned up from 
these wide miles of Lombardic plains would see 
the real object of worship. 

This cathedral is not finished yet. Many pieces 
of work have been added since I saw it four years 
ago. Many more will be added before I see it 
again. This cathedral is so exquisite, airy, white, 
pure, aspiring, so suggestive of the grandest in 
nature, of the holiest in life, my heart returns to 
it, notwithstanding what I said about the cathedral 
at Cologne, according to the German proverb : 

Die erste liebe 
1st die beste. 



XX. 

HUNG YESTERDAY— CROWNED TO-DAY. 

Savonarola. 

"Xfaj^THEN Sidney Smith was asked what should 
^Qt be done with a certain bad man, who un- 
deniably had some great excellences, he 
said, " Hang him first, and erect him a statue after- 
ward." It has always been thus with our blind 
world. And it is not particular about applying 
this favorite mode of dealing to obvious compounds 
of good and evil. It stones its prophets, and then 
builds their tombs ; it slays its Christ, and then 
exhausts human ability in portraying his features 
and glorifying his name. 

Italy has been especially given to this martyr- 
ing and apotheosizing business. Not to go far, 
Florence here banished Dante, in 1302 ; kept him 
away from home till his heart broke, nineteen years 
after; and six hundred years went by before they 
so repented of their father's deed as to bring forth 
works meet for repentance ; but when the six 
hundreth anniversary of his birth arrived, there 
was unvailed before their Westminster Abbey the 



Hung Yesterday — Crowned To-day. 153 

Santa Croce, a monument which all Italy united 
to build, and of which all Italy may well be proud. 
I went about to-day among the three hundred and 
forty-two banners that provinces, cities, universi- 
ties, academies, and societies sent up, from every 
part of Italy, to aid in adding honor to his name. 
I lifted their heavy silken folds, their rich velvets, 
their gorgeous painting, their golden embroidery, 
with reverent care ; for they were all telling me, 
that whatever wrong man may suffer for a time, 
all the race will combine, if need be, to set him 
right. / 

It has been especially the case with Savonarola. 
Hanged, burned, and his ashes flung into the Arno, 
the first moment of reviving liberty hastens to do 
honor to his memory. It is most- significant that 
there is no name chosen from a long roll in a 
glorious past, that Florentines are now seeking to 
honor as Savonarola's. We remember him as a 
Protestant, protesting with fiery eloquence against 
an infallible pope ; as a deep religious nature, de- 
nouncing all empty forms, and insisting on vital 
godliness; refusing to absolve a king unless he 
first made complete restitution; we remember 
him as a practical republican, calling men back 
from indolent luxury to rigid self-control ; and it 
is interesting to see that it is in these vital char- 



154 Sights and Insights. 

acteristics that the Florentines choose to remem- 
ber him to-day. Out in the new quarter of their 
growing city, they have given to one of their most 
beautiful squares, not the name of some king they 
would flatter, nor some minister they would please, 
but the name of Savonarola. It is most fitting that 
he who ruled this city by calling a council of the 
worthiest, who made an orderly republic out of 
anarchy by his individual power, should have some 
civic recognition, as well as religious remembrance. 
Besides, on the monument placed in his cell, in 
this 1873, they have not depicted his devotion, his 
teaching the brotherhood, or swaying the crowd ; 
but have shown him before the Council of the Re- 
public, swaying all hearts and minds to liberty and 
life. Yet his religious power and influence have 
been by no means overlooked. A great poster met 
me in the street, a few days since, announcing a 
grand concert, total proceeds to be devoted to the 
erection of a monument to Savonarola. I wanted 
to help build such a memorial, and went. The 
largest orchestra in the city, twenty-four piano- 
players, the best cantatrice the city could boast, 
and thousands of the citizens of Florence, were 
there to aid in the work. 

I soon after found my way to Piazza San 
Marco, now so quiet, once so swarming with the 



Hung Yesterday — Crowned To-day. 155 

men who thirsted for blood. I found the whole 
monastery where Savonarola once lived set apart 
as a sacred place, with custodians appointed, and 
the relics of Florence's greatest man were visited 
with reverence. I soon found my way to the studio 
of Professor Pazzi, and there stood before me, in 
colossal majesty, the figure of the man Florence 
now delights to honor. 

I have seen hundreds of statues — Moses, David, 
Jupiter, Minerva, the dying gladiator, Caesar, 
and Pompey, at whose feet great Caesar fell ; 
but I never saw one that stirred me so deeply. 
The dress is astonishingly simple ; there is none 
of the infinite work that gives marble laces and 
jewels; there is nothing affecting in posture; all 
the power is in the face, there the soul shines 
forth ; the divine fire breaks out ; you never 
think of marble; you are before a man, and 
one full of God. He holds aloft, in his right 
hand, the form of the Crucified One, and is in 
the act of saying, " Florentines ! this is the 
King of the Universe ! will you have him to 
be your King ? " You could prophesy the an- 
swer, if he had spoken it to a horde of barba- 
rians. And they answered with one voice, and 
much ardor, *' Yes ! yes ! " And Christ was 
king of Florence, as never before or since. 



156 Sights and Insights. 

It thrills me like the hills of Galilee to walk about 
and put my hand on things familiar to him ; to 
peer over the writing that his hand traced, and 
think that so much of God could come to a single 
human being, to sway and mold a whole teeming 
city. I fill up the empty acres of the vast cathedral 
with an immovably packed multitude; I go up 
to Ferrara, and bring down the man of power, and 
remember his words that burnt themselves into 
me years ago, so that now, away from all books 
and aids to recollection, and all need of them, I 
go over the history of those pregnant years as if it 
were the only reality of to-day. Those old cells 
were not empty to-day, though no monk has walked 
them for years ; those holy faces, full of power 
from the divine Angelico's fingers, were not old ; 
Savonarola's cell was not a curiosity-shop ; it was 
a closet for devotion — one of the gardens of Geth- 
semane for men previous to their Calvaries. That 
pulpit by the pillar is higher than Olympus ; but 
all its thunder-bolts are warmed and winged with 
love ; and that Pizza Signoria is no place of martyr- 
dom, but of apotheosis — a lifting up to rule com- 
ing centuries as he could not his own. I do not 
wonder that the people said that the angels 
sprinkled flowers and songs upon the spot made 
dear by sending sucb a man to them. 



Hung Yesterday — Crowned To-day. 157 

But am I forgetting the statue ? No ; I never 
can! It stands before me yet. It has the seer's 
eyes ; they are the eyes of one who has looked on 
God, and not been blasted by the sight ; they have 
been opened preternaturally, so that they can 
never close ; always thereafter they look throicgh 
matter, and rest on the real. It is a pleasure to 
know that they are real features, not the fancy of a 
sculptor. I had been up to the Uffizi, to find his 
likeness cut in a gem during his life ; I had been 
here and there to find a portrait or two ; and when 
I came before the statue, it was my old friend, 
and not the form of a stranger. The cold stone 
was transfigured with an inner light that made it 
human. 

I see every day what would have been impossi- 
ble ten years ago. Italy is on the march of prog- 
ress at the double quick. It gives me joy that 
ingoing back to find the men who inspire their 
highest enthusiasm, we find them to be full of 
godliness and power divine. Their Lorenzo the 
Magnificent, with all his wealth, could get no such 
monument; and if he could, is forever debarred 
from such memory. But to-day the people, with 
true instinct, honor the men who have been true to 
them. They thus honor their favorites ; but they 
more mold and shape the character of their own 



158 Sights and Insights. 

future. The recoil of wickedness thought to anni- 
hilate Savonarola ; they burned his body, and 
strewed his ashes toward the sea ; they did not 
know that the real power was yet unseen ; and 
when they covered the spot where he suffered 
with an enormous fountain, men persisted in calling 
it a monument to him. And now that four hun- 
dred years are gone, the unseen and undying rises 
to assert its power, and rules in the hearts of men. 
I turned with equal delight to seek the traces of 
another king — one who turned him to the works 
of God. Years ago there was a Luther of science 
here in Florence. He lacked Luther's heroism to 
face devils ; but then he had not Luther's inspira- 
tion. No man can die for a truth of the intellect. 
It takes one of the heart to make martyrs. Let 
us not blame Galileo too severely, for we do not 
know how the rack feels. 

. They have put his monument in St. Croce, their 
Westminster Abbey. He stands looking up. A 
little globe is under his hand, just the right size 
for the world, and the great man is scanning 
a broader universe. The house where he lived, 
the tower where he made his observations, and 
the very spy-glass he made, but not the. rack v/ith 
which they tortured him, are sacredly kept in 
Florence. I went on a pilgrimage. The prospect 



Hung Yesterday — Crowned To-day. 159 

is the same to-day from Torre del'Gallo as when 
he looked upon it. On every side are the stiff- 
ened billows of the sea turned to green hills of 
earth. Below is the beautiful city, the huge Du- 
omo, the charming Campanile, and the winding 
Arno. Far away are the snowy Apennines, white 
as the heavens they pierce. And the prospect is 
the same to-night. Wider than the earth is the 
canopy of heaven. There go the stars, and they 
speak and sing across the wide spaces. Night 
unto night showeth knowledge. They have a wis- 
dom so important that in comparison there is no 
voice nor language where theirs is not heard. I do 
not wonder that he who had an ear to hear climbed 
up above the quieted city, and the hushed earth, 
and turned his ear to the skies. He invented in- 
struments to aid his senses, and learned to read 
the hitherto unspelled hieroglyphs of the stars. I 
went to s"ee his first spy-glass with a kind of rev- 
erence that I never felt for the preserved reliques 
of those who were only kings of men, and not of 
minds. It has an inch aperture, is about two feet 
long, and is cased in wood. 

So small, and short, and meanly made ! 
Yet showed it first to human eye 
Fair Venus, curved like Cupid's bow, 
And Lunar' s mountains lifted high. 



1 60 Sights and Insights. 

It prophesied of Saturn's rings, 
And showed the diamond points of light 
In Jove's crown, which he uplifts 
And makes like dawning day his night. 
It changed the sun from Phoebus' face 
Into a world beyond all thought, 
Itself all storms, but by it peace 
And life to other worlds are brought ; 

And was its maker " blinded by 
Excess of light," or was he blind, 
That he might therefore pause and leave 
Somewhat for other men to find ? 

How like, and yet how unlike faith, 
So seeming weak, so full of might, 
It gems an empty heaven with stars 
Till there can be no utter night ; 
Then learns to read the star- writ page, 
That blazons all the radiant dome ; 
The scattered stars in ordered lines 
Read clear, " my Father, heaven, and home." 

Now turn thy gaze upon the Son. 
Uncomely formlessness is grace ! 
And whom we thought a dying man 
Is God, forever, to our race. 

Can men see God, and see again ? 
Faith clears the sight ; blasts sightless never ; 
And shows a universe so grand 
That all may find therein forever. 



XXI. 

AMUSEMENTS OF ROYALTY. 

p 

f THINK the fact that kings must amuse them- 
selves gets impressed about as deeply on an 
observer of their doings as any other one fact 
of their existence. They rule, or are said to ; but 
that they amuse themselves is perfectly evident. 
Even Peter the Great must have his lapdogs 
about. And they show, as something too sacred 
to be removed, the grease spots on the satin-dam- 
ask upholstery where he fed them. Nero amused 
himself with burning Christians by the thousand, 
and Caligula by frightening his ministers. 

They have a more harmless way now. It runs 
greatly to collecting odd and beautiful things. 
Man has a great taste for the beautiful. As soon 
as he is released from daily toil to obtain his bread, 
he begins to embody his conceptions of beauty. 
The South Sea Islander carves with infinite pains 
his paddle or hatchet-handle. And as soon as one 
has more money than he needs for bread, he be- 
gins to buy beautiful things. Kings have both 
leisure and money. And as men have not time 



1 62 Sights and Insights. 

to produce what they want, they create a life -long 
leisure for them. That is, they employ whole 
classes of adapted men to embody beauty. 

One of the most striking results of this artificial- 
ly procured leisure is the production of mosaics. 
There are various kinds, such as pavements of 
stones, inlaid in pattern, or pictures, or words. 
There are tables of a single slab, with a section 
inlaid with other stones ; and there are pictures 
made of arranged bits of colored glass, so beauti- 
fully done that they surpass the nicest coloring 
with the brush. 

I have been to see the table manufactory of the 
Imperial Government at Florence. In the outer 
courts are arranged the raw materials — all sorts of 
precious and common stones, both in a natural 
and polished condition. Afterward you come 
to small specimens of inlaid work ; paper weights, 
with a few arranged stones sunk in the surface ; 
then to framed pictures, and tables, an indescrib- 
able variety and richness. One object is to secure 
permanence for such treasures of art. And as 
God's colors in stone are far more brilliant and 
durable than when man has ground them up and 
mixed them over, they take the real color and 
durable stone and work it into designs. Of course 
it takes time without limit, and skill beyond meas- 



Amusements of Royalty. 163 

lire. The pieces of stone must be matched to far 
less than a hair's breadth. The desired color 
must be found, others cut away, and the whole 
surface be perfectly smooth when finished. It is 
no wonder that twenty men toil twenty years at 
one work. And their success is perfect. 

You see a table before you. Lying in the mid- 
dle is a heap of sea-shells, a cluster of fruit, a 
musical instrument. But examination shows it to 
be all level stone. They do not hesitate to en- 
counter the difficulties of perspective. They will 
throw down a wavy gossamer of ribbon, that it 
seems you might blow away, just as perfectly as 
they build Bunker Hill Monument. They give 
flowers with a little pearl sunk in a petal for a 
dew-drop, and birds of paradise flitting in the 
vines more perfectly than can be done by paint. 
These things are wonderful, indescribable. I 
wished to bring home a few tables for the Arch- 
street parsonage. I found I could take a table 
top of three feet diameter, with six shells and a 
sprig of coral, by leaving three thousand five hun- 
dred dollars in gold ; one somewhat larger, with 
birds and arabesque, for twenty-three thousand 
five hundred dollars ; one ten feet in diameter, 
entirely mosaic and mounted, by leaving one hun- 
dred and fifty thousand dollars. I left the tables. 



164 Sights and Insights. 

Mosaic pictures in glass are, if possible, more 
wonderful. There are about ten thousand shades 
of glass, more or less, according to the nicety of 
the eye that counts — decidedly less, in my case. 
These are arranged in bits from an eighth to a 
half inch square, so as to present an even surface 
and perfect gradation of most brilliant color. 
Some churches, like St. Mark's at Venice, are en- 
tirely lined, roof and wall, with these pictures ; 
others, like St. Peter's at Rome, have only the 
dome so finished, and a few elaborate copies of 
great masters on the walls. I saw a copy of 
Guido's Aurora so nicely wrought in glass that it 
took the closest inspection to detect the junctures. 
I had to decide a dispute with a stranger by point- 
ing to the word "mosaic" on its label. It was 
cheap at fifteen thousand dollars. Size, six feet 
by two and a half. 

The Pope is so royal in his tastes and treas- 
ures that he keeps a mosaic factory in the Vatican. 
In addition to pictures for St. Peter's, he also 
makes tables for presents to those he would bind 
to his interest. He gave one to the Czarina of 
Russia yesterday. But he did not give me one 
when visiting the Vatican. He evidently believes 
in " placing his bonds where they will do the most 
good." Send on your Peter's pence. 



Amusements of Royalty. 165 

These are not the only niceties kings cause to be 
produced. There is a world of delicate microsco- 
pic engraving and ivory carving. I have seen a 
wooden beer-mug, ten inches high, called the 
Kaiser Pokal, carved from a single piece of box- 
wood. It is for sale at three thousand dollars, 
gold. All I can say is, it is worth it — to make it ; 
and worth it to keep, if one buys such things. 

I found in Dresden an egg full of meat. Within 
the white was a chicken ; in the chicken a crown ; 
in the crown a ring. It was a mechanical way of 
popping the question. It said to the young lady 
receiving it, There is a wedding and a kingdom for 
you ; but you can only find them in the chicken- 
hearted prince, who has not yet chipped his shell, 
that is, come to his majority. I hope she sent him 
a duck. 

11 



XXII. 

EDUCATION BY TRAVEL. 

^Jffi7"HEN one is abroad he does not so much 
^V^jy travel as go to school. He carries " his 
shining morning face," but does not 
"creep like a snail." When you see him trying to 
master the difficulties of two foreign languages in 
one day, scraping his throat, and balking at eight 
difficult consonants together, with only one vowel 
to help them, in the morning ; at noon, casting all 
his roughness behind him, imitating accents of 
" sunny Italy," taking women talking to children 
as helps to make his liquids and vowels soft 
enough, repeating every word he hears in his 
eagerness to learn, you conclude that he is simply 
a student of languages. 

You look at his library of guide books, where the 
most minute directions are mingled with history, 
biography, and poetry ; at his most perfect maps, 
and you cannot guess whether he is an historian, or 
poet, or an officer, incog., making a reconnoissance 
of the country preparatory to an invasion. 



Education by Travel. 167 

Then he drops all these, leans his body half out 
of the window, to the great danger of the telegraph 
poles, trying to see why he hugs the rough hillside, 
turning to every point of the compass in ten min- 
utes, leaping ravines one hundred feet deep, dash- 
ing through four tunnels with not the length of the 
train between them, in one of which the train 
turns right about, coming out in an opposite direc- 
tion, when the smooth valley below invites to an 
even road and the large cities to an abundant 
traffic, and you think he is a civil engineer. He 
sees an Apennine ahead that must be crossed, and 
the road teaches him that youth must prepare for 
surmounting the difficulties of manhood, and un- 
less small hills of difficulty are put under foot in 
early life, there will be no flying over mountains 
in maturer years. 

He studies drainage here and irrigation there, 
plucks the sage green of the olive, and the amber 
green of the new wheat, till you are sure he never 
was any thing but a farmer. Then he looks so lov- 
ingly on the sunny hills where Petrarch wrote and 
Ariosto sung, that you feel sure he is a poet. Then 
he watches the women in the fields, swinging pick 
and sledge on the railroad embankments, as if he 
were only studying the woman question. He 
rushes through a whole town straight for a single 



1 68 Sights and Insights. 

picture or building, as if only an artist, and leaps 
out to dip his hands in the Sanguinetto at Thrasa- 
meno, as if his own ancestors had been with Hanni- 
bal when he made that stream carry more blood 
than water, on the victorious day when he de- 
stroyed the Roman army under Flaminius. 

What a start it gave me just now to hear the 
guard call out, " Thrasameno Signori." Memory 
yielded up its long, buried treasures wrung from 
Livy, by midnight toil (!), so many years ago. I 
saw right around me the vast amphitheater of hills 
on which Hannibal had ambushed his soldiers ; 
just before me was the narrow outlet toward 
Rome, stopped by the wily Carthagenian ; behind 
me the narrow road of ingress between the hills 
and the lake. Into this trap came the Roman 
consul. Then all Carthage burst out upon him 
with concentered spears. Caught in flank, cut off 
from retreat, advance, or flight, they could only 
rush into the lake, or die by the weapons of their 
foes. In the terrible confusion an earthquake 
reeled unheeded by. Hereafter another of those 
almost airy nothings we read of will be reality, 
because it has a local habitation. Thus history 
becomes vivid and real, and geography is no longer 
a mass of names, a maze of lines, and maps are 
no more a fool's coat of colors. One sees why 



Education by Travel. 169 

battles were fought here, there, and not elsewhere. 
Mountains teach him their place and height by 
the weariness of the climbing, by the snow he 
walks on in mid-summer, by the sublimity of pre- 
cipitous wall, and the beauty of a thousand land- 
scapes, so charming that memory keeps them all. 
He expects no brighter, till the revelations of the 
world to come. 

All his knowledge of the old world has been a 
sort of chaos, without order and relation. But 
being here, one center of relation after another 
is established. Separate facts fly to their appro- 
priate affinities, great lights take their places, 
lesser ones revolve about them, and a universe 
is seemingly created, full of beauty and order, 
where only chaos reigned before. 

Seeking the head-waters of the Nile, the trav- 
eler finds vast lakes, sublime mountains, gorgeous 
tropical scenery, and the river itself larger than at 
its mouth. So in seeking the sources of our mod- 
ern civilization, of our art, and even of liberty, 
the traveler makes similar discoveries. There are 
mountains of visions ; there are lands of Beulah, 
and deserts of Sahara. One day he stands by the 
fountain heads of influence. He sees the outgoing 
streams widening through continents that flush 
with verdure wherever the healing waters come. 



170 Sights and Insights. 

The next day he stands by the crater of an ex- 
tinct political volcano, where time's repair of grass 
and flowers has partially obliterated the works of 
violence, and he sees that the fiery flood has 
flowed afar into other nations and kingdoms, car- 
rying its desolation and death. Moral pestilences 
gendered in loathsome crime have their tracks as 
well as physical ones. 

What a sublime thing it is to feel oneself in the 
headquarters of nations, and not merely for to-day, 
but for all past days. Alexanders, Caesars, Napo- 
leons move in his view, fight over their battles at 
his call. He opens his vision to influences too 
subtile for sight, influences that are mightier than 
armies. He sees where ideas break open Bastiles, 
where the sighs of the oppressed combine into 
whirlwinds that overturn thrones, where spiritual 
influences lift nations as gravitation lifts the sea ; 
he sees their unsuspected power along the ages, 
changing a mighty king into a puppet, and making 
an unknown peasant king of souls. He begins to 
feel that he has caught a glimpse of the way in 
which Omniscience sees the world. In it all he is 
only going to school, changing his studies frequent- 
ly, and getting his teaching by the object method. 

What a royal progress it is ! Heralds have been 
before, and trodden down the hills, filled up the 



Education by Travel. 171 

valleys, and prepared a highway on which I can 
drive my chariot wheels from thirty to sixty miles 
an hour. Yesterday morning I had the Alps be- 
neath my feet, this morning the Apennines, and I 
hope Vesuvius to-morrow. Yesterday I shivered 
in three woolen shirts, overcoat, and rug, among 
snows that never melt. To-day I have been where 
flowers were up to my knees, and violets up to my 
nose, though I have not yet lost sight of snow on 
the mountains. Wherever I wish to stop men 
have erected magnificent apartments, provided 
every comfort, and they swarm out at my ap- 
proach to give triumphal entry. Artists and 
architects have labored for centuries to rear mag- 
nificent piles and decorate them in the most gor- 
geous manner for my coming. And it is all mine. 
It detracts nothing that others can look at and 
enjoy these things also. It adds to the interest. 
How rich I am ! 

I have hung over the landscape in a state of 
intoxication, (not inebriation ;) have been march- 
ing the armies of ten centuries up and down the 
valleys ; have brought back Virgil, and other clas- 
sical writers, to their old place of resort ; admired 
the amazing triumphs of modern and ancient en- 
gineering skill ; have sung and shouted old Meth- 
odist hymns in a blessed state of content. 



172 Sights and Insights. 

I have just dashed through a few miles at the 
head of the Nera worthy of special mention. The 
road was cut straight through a wild, tortuous 
ravine. The result was that the river crossed the 
road thirty times in so short a distance that the 
train was frequently on three bridges at once. 
Add the tunnels, abutments, lofty precipices, and 
it makes a scene that causes one to hang more 
than half way out of the window. Amazing feats 
of engineering may be expected when the Govern- 
ment furnishes the money, and it makes no differ- 
ence whether a road pays dividends or not. 

Beautiful Italy ! No wonder men have loved 
thee ! The soil is so rich that it bears three sepa- 
rate crops at once, even yet. For example, there 
is the grass, grain, or roots, of the surface, the ber- 
ries or small fruits that cover the trees, and the 
grapes that are trained between. It is a wonder 
that the whole land is not rich. But you do not 
see a new house in a whole day's ride ; many 
are evidently going to ruin ; but no new ones rise 
to take their place, nor are any repairs made to 
render them more comfortable. Whole towns ap- 
pear to be without a pane of glass, and the inhab- 
itants without a change of garments ; indeed, 
without one whole suit. Not only are they so 
poverty-stricken in purse, but, until lately, they 



Education by Travel. 173 

have been equally so in mind. There was even 
lacking a sufficient national feeling to prevent 
their being driven like dumb cattle at the will of 
the miserable little lordlings. We have some 
reason to hope better things of them hereafter; 
but there are serious drawbacks. The way these 
petty officials strut in all kinds of uniform tells 
against the national character. The employment 
of woman in the meanest occupations — as I saw 
one to-day spreading manure from a heap with 
her hands — tells against them. The nation that 
offers all the adoration of which human nature is 
capable to an ideal woman, and leaves not even 
respect for the real women — mothers, daughters, 
and wives — has certainly no immoderately hopeful 
future. 

This letter, penciled at various stoppages of the 
train, is now to be finished in the Salla at Rome, 
waiting for the train to Naples. A walk of an 
hour through Rome by starlight and gaslight 
shows an immense improvement over four years 
ago. Letter boxes, telegraph wires, clean streets, 
gaslights, streets torn up for other improvements, 
new buildings, and plentiful supply of whitewash, 
show that the nineteenth century has penetrated 
the outside of the city and shut up the fourteenth 
in the narrow walls of the Vatican. 



XXIII. 

THE CHURCHES OF ROME 

JjT/^)ET me set one before you. Among the 
^ { thousand things one desires to bring from 
Europe I found nothing I so much desired, 
and so thoroughly determined to bring, as a cathe- 
dral. We need apprehend no difficulty in bring- 
ing home a cathedral; for, not to speak of the 
transmigrations of the palace of Aladdin, which we 
all believed once, (and half wish we did now,) are 
we not told that the angels brought the house in 
which Mary lived from Nazareth to Loretto ? 

It is always best to know some of a sight before 
we try to see it. For a century the great Method- 
ist body built churches in America, sometimes at 
the rate of several a day. It covered a continent 
with ten thousand buildings varying in value from 
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to two hun- 
dred and fifty dollars ; and yet this great denomi- 
nation did not invest in a century's time but a trifle 
more than a fourth of the cost of the building we 
are about to set before you. There has been ex- 
pended on it nearly one hundred million dollars, 



The Churches of Rome. 175 

and that too in a country and age where materials 
and labor have been exceedingly cheap. No won- 
der they have been obliged to sell permission to 
sin to obtain funds for its erection ; for men will 
pay for sinning as they will pay for nothing else. 
This church is the grandest monument to the 
Reformation ever built; for the sale of indulg- 
ences, to supply the funds for its erection, lighted 
the flames of that Reformation. 

Corning before the church, we see a vast col- 
onnade of two hundred and eighty-four columns, 
each sixty-two feet in height, arranged in four 
circular lines on either side. Any one of these 
columns, erected to commemorate an historic 
event, would be an object of admiration in any 
city. On the top of these is a stone roof, sur- 
mounted by one hundred and ninety-two stat- 
ues of saints, each statue being twelve feet high. 
I remember seeing a catalogue of all the statuary 
in one of our oldest States. It included all in 
parks, halls, cemeteries, and private houses. And 
the total number was twenty-five. These circular 
colonnades are arranged to afford a drive-way wide 
enough for two carriages abreast between its two 
middle rows, and for one carriage in each of the 
side rows. These terminate in a covered way, 
leading up to the two front corners of the church 



176 Sights and Insights. 

itself. Then comes the wide vestibule, and the 
unequaled church. 

The dimensions are as follows : Length of space 
inclosed in circular colonnades, seven hundred and 
seventy-seven feet; breadth, five hundred and 
eighty-eight feet ; length of covered way, three 
hundred feet ; breadth of vestibule, forty-seven 
feet; length of church, six hundred and thirteen 
feet : total, seventeen hundred and thirty-seven 
feet ; almost exactly one third of a mile. Set it up 
before you. Clear away houses, streets, or forests 
enough for its standing room, and be amazed at 
its immensity. 

Glance up at its height. Its whole front, crowned 
with statues of Christ and the Apostles is on£ 
hundred and sixty-two feet high. Seven eighths 
of the steeples in our country are short enough to 
stand inside the church. Look at the dome. 
Arch-street Church, Philadelphia, a model of taste 
and beauty, is ninety feet long. Suppose we try the 
dome on that Church, and see how it fits. Like . 
a man's hat on a baby's head ! Let one edge cor- 
respond with the rear wall of the church, and the 
other will go one hundred and ten feet beyond the 
front. That is, the mere dome has a diameter 
greater than the length of two such churches. 
And remember that this enormous structure does 



The Churches of Rome. 1 77 

not begin till a height of one hundred and fifty 
feet has been reached — few steeples are tall enough 
to serve as ladders to reach its beginning — then it 
rises more than three hundred feet beyond. 

Rome has three hundred and sixty-five some- 
what similar churches — one for every day in the 
year, except leap year. All of them are objects 
of interest. They have had lavished on them the 
best efforts of the best endowed natures. They 
shine with alabaster and marble. Stories of the 
sainted are written in most beautiful pictures by 
painter's brush, or the patient toil of the mosaic 
worker. They are often crowded with statuary 
embodying heroic deeds and martyr sacrifices. 
They stand on spots where Saints Pudens, Clem- 
ent, Paul, and numberless others, are believed to 
have lived or died, not counting their lives dear 
unto themselves so that they might finish their 
course with joy, and the ministry they received of 
the Lord Jesus. These churches really have the 
grandest and holiest associations, are magnificent 
in themselves, are the highest result of man's ar- 
chitectural ability, and most of them are decorated 
with the best designs of artists that God dowered 
with wondrous ability. At their altars is an almost 
perpetual service, where priests, gorgeous in silk 
and gold, intone mellifluous prayers ; where tidy 



178 Sights a7id Insights. 

boys swing censers of perfume, and where magnifi- 
cent voices chant anthems sacred for two thou- 
sand years. Now, what is the result of all this 
grandeur of architecture, beauty of painting, ven- 
erableness of antiquity, gorgeousness of parapher- 
nalia, propriety of intonation, sweetness of incense, 
sacredness of association, and machinery of re- 
ligion, on the priests who perform or the people 
who participate ? Most beggarly. Outside influ- 
ences do much for man when his heart is clean ; 
almost nothing if it is not. The volcano recks 
little of the flowers that have sought to beautify 
its ragged crest and sweeten its sulphurous breath. 
Its fiery flood turns not aside because some human 
hearts are living out their loves in a home that lies 
in its path. And man's heart of power recks not 
for gentle or tempestuous influences when it moves 
out to execute its purpose. 

Thus these priests and people are what they are 
from inner, and not from outer, influences. From 
him who calls himself Christ's vicegerent, down 
to the humblest menial in these churchly muse- 
ums, there is no evidence that these things have 
at all ennobled their lives. Popes have been no 
better than ordinary kings, and they, as a rule, are 
monuments of the bad gone to seed. The laziness, 
rapacity, and moral vileness of priests in this city 



The Churches of Rome. 179 

has passed into a proverb. The sons of Eli can 
make themselves vile while they handle holy ves- 
sels. I have seen them joke in the midst of the 
most solemn scenes, and while engaged in the 
most serious services. I commenced to make an 
arrangement with a subordinate to see the Pan- 
theon by moonlight. He rushed from me at the 
first word to the altar to attend to his part of the 
service, came back, and said, " Come to number 
10 — Amen — via della Palombella — Amen — at ten 
o'clock — Retorno subito;" and off he went to 
keep up his end of the service, and came back im- 
mediately to finish his talk with me. The same 
day I went into S. Trinita de' Pelligrini to see 
Guido's picture. It was curtained, and a mass 
was in progress at an adjacent altar. The sacris- 
tan withdrew the curtain, moved me over to the 
point of the best light, which I discovered to be 
the center of a group of kneeling people, and 
where I could put my hand on the shoulder of the 
officiating priest. I never felt so much like a hea- 
then in my life. And now the one picture I most 
distinctly remember in that church is that of two 
men tramping round in a service among kneeling 
people to see another picture. But the officer did 
not care a bit. His prospective half franc blinded 
him to all incongruities. 



180 Sights and Insights. 

The effect on the people is no better. Like 
priest, like people. What different is the rude 
country boor who has stalked round or knelt down 
in open-mouthed astonishment at a snarl of angels' 
legs and arms, at contorted attitudes of naked 
men and women in marble, who has been dinned 
with incomprehensible words of an unknown 
tongue, and been treated to smoke, like so much 
bacon, for half an hour ? Nothing perceptibly 
better, I assure you. Rosewater don't take the 
dross out of ore. It takes fire. No pungency of 
incense can sweeten human nature, especially 
Italian. It is a king with ten thousand going to 
meet one with twenty thousand. 

How I have longed to ring in their ears what 
Luther heard when toiling up the Holy Stairs on 
his knees : " The just shall live by faith ! " Italian 
character is the embodied result of the opposite 
doctrine — living by works. The result is most 
deplorable and despicable. Italian character had 
a good foundation — Roman bravery, hardihood, 
obedience to law, and contempt for Punic faith. 
The end is feebleness, cowardice, mendacity, and 
lawless lust. One would think that salvation by 
works would at least result in morality. But it 
does not. Nothing but the power of God within 
ever does. Feelings, passions, desires, override all 



The Churches of Rome. 181 

mere reasonings and ideas. But the culmination 
of the evil of salvation by works is in this — that 
some saints have supererogatory works, and the 
Church has treasured up the sum total of these for 
the benefit of those who are insolvent in morality 
but solvent in money. What every church in 
Rome bears as an amulet of honor on its portal 
is really the brand of its shame : "Plenary indul- 
gence daily, perpetual, for the living and the dead." 

A decidedly plenary statement. And this indul- 
gence is easily got. A kiss on the cross in the 
Coliseum is good for one hundred days' indul- 
gence ; a crawling up the Holy Stairs on the hands 
and knees, for a thousand years ; and a sight of 
Saint Veronica's pocket-handkerchief is good for 
seven thousand years' indulgence. Too dog-cheap. 
Men cannot believe that what costs so little can 
be of any value. But then nobody knows what 
amount of penance may be due us for our sins, 
and as insurance costs so little, it is just as well 
to have an anchor to windward by laying in 
a stock of indulgence from penance. So the sale 
is enormous, even if the market value is as low as 
Confederate bonds. 

Any Church having such an element in its 

economy shows that it prefers money in its coffers 

to morality in its communicants, and will build 

12 



1 82 Sights and Insights. 

splendid temples of stone, but beggarly temples of 
souls. It wins money marvelously. I went to see 
II Santissimo Bambino, the richest thing in Rome. 
It has more jewels than the king, and, regardless 
of taste, wears them all at once — on crown, fore- 
head, breast, arm, every-where. It has servants, 
horses, and carriages of its own. But it is only 
a wooden doll about the size of a babe. 

The statue of the Virgin in St. Aquostino is al- 
most equally rich. There is hardly room on neck, 
forehead, ears, and whole breast to display her 
jewels. Her exposed forefinger is not a tenth long 
enough to wear her diamond rings. They are 
arranged by scores in adjacent cases. She has 
watches, cameos, gold chains by the rod, and re- 
ceived money every minute of my hour's inspec- 
tion. Her wealth is reckoned by millions. Yes, 
they get money ; but do the souls get bread? I 
could but think of a scene that occurred within a 
stone's throw, when a whole piazza swarmed with 
a hungry crowd, after the erection of fountains, 
crying, " Pane, pane, non fontane ! " — " Bread, 
bread, not fountains." So I wished the hungry 
crowd might cry for the bread of life, not stone 
images. What a ceaseless hunger it must be that 
always yearns but is never filled ; that knows no 
returning stream nor flood! What has such a 



The Churches of Rome. 183 

Church to give ? Wearying works, but no restful 
trust. I never saw so clearly the utter uselessness 
of machinery, manners, and millinery for salvation. 
Art has power, but sin has more. Sin masters art, 
and makes it serve to decorate the place where it 
revels. It is not power in man nor of man that 
saves, but power above man ; none other nor less 
than the power of God. The aurora of its com- 
ing to Italy gleams already in the eastern sky. 



XXIY. 

PONTIFICAL NEPOTISM. 

rjTL NEVER knew what nepotism meant. I was 
(^ familiar with its derivation and dictionary 
meaning, and it seems to me some stump 
orator alluded to it in the last campaign. But 
when I came before a vast palace, fronting on 
three squares and streets, each facade designed 
and executed by a different architect, inclosing 
a beautiful garden, containing fourteen galleries 
and rooms filled with rarest pictures, statues, and 
works of art, besides uncounted other rooms ; and 
when I rode out to the Janiculan hill, and found 
a villa with elegant gardens, four miles in circuit, 
filled with fountains, flowers, and all that nature, 
assisted by art, could accomplish ; and further, 
when I returned to Rome and saw a second pal- 
ace, and found that both palaces and villa, and 
a fund sufficient to endow and keep them in abun- 
dant wealth for two hundred years past and an 
unknown future, had been only a part of the pro- 
ceeds of the nepotism of one Pope, who nepoted 



Pontifical Nepotism. 185 

only eleven years, then my mind, expanded by 
these object-lessons, began to survey and map out 
the continental dimensions of nepotism. It is a 
good thing to spread yourself upon. They called 
him " Innocent ; " not in jest, assuredly, for 
About, in his " Rome Contemporaine," tells us 
" that Innocent X. was constrained to found the 
Mansion Pamphili. The casuists and jurisconsults 
relieved his scruples, for he had some ; they proved 
that the Pope had a right to economize the reve- 
nues of the Holy See, to assure the future of his 
family ; they fixed, with a moderation that quite 
makes our hair stand on our head, the measures of 
liberality permitted to each Pope ; they agreed 
that the sovereign Pontiff could without abuse, 
besides annual revenues to nephews, give nine 
hundred thousand francs to each of his nieces ; 
the general of the Jesuits, R. V. Vitelleschi, ap- 
proved this decision ; thereupon Innocent X. took 
it upon himself to found the Pamphili Mansion, to 
construct the Pamphili Palace, to lay out the Villa 
Pamphili, and to pamphilify whenever he could the 
revenues of the Church and State." 

If any scruples remained after the labor of law- 
yers, divines, and the general of Jesuits, they 
were effectually dispersed by his sister-in-law, 
Olympia Maldacchini, who, even if Papessa Joan 



1 86 Sights and Insights. 

was a myth, wielded the papal powers. She ran 
the machine of papacy as a mint, and coined 
enormous sums from the sale of holy offices. 
During the later years of the life of Innocent X. 
she never left his presence, except to convey the 
profits to her palace ; and on those occasions she 
used to turn the lock on him and carry the key 
in her pocket. Surely he was as much as ten in- 
nocents rolled into one. 

I saw his monument in holy St. Agnes to-day. 
It is admirable. It is one of those sculptures that 
tell their own story at once, I read it right off. 
" Here kneels the triple-crowned father, reaching 
out his hand to Olympia, who kneels a little below. 
He has already given her the golden chalice from 
the altar. It is so full of coin that you can see 
one over the edge ; but still she reaches for more, 
and still he reaches to give." A bystander was 
horrified. " Why," said he, " don't you see that 
kneeling woman is a holy angel ? Yet she kneels 
below the holy father. She holds in her hand the 
holy grail. What you call a coin is a gilded rep- 
resentation of the wafer that is the real body 
and blood of Christ ; and that angel is about to 
give him the holy sacrament and extreme unction ! 
Olympia and money in a monument ! " I could 
only say that if it meant extreme unction, he 



Pontifical Nepotism. 187 

needed as extreme an unction as any angel could 
produce. But in my opinion Maini, who erected 
the monument, was in a kind of Caiaphian mode, 
and builded wiser than he knew. 

It amazes one to find so many of the seventy- 
two palaces in Rome were built from the funds of 
the Church. Pope Urban VII. seemed possessed 
with a desire of getting all Rome into the hands 
of his nephews. His family symbol was bees. 
The traveler finds them swarming every-where — 
not only on the fronts of churches, the baptistery 
of the Lateran, the Baldacchino of St. Peter, all 
over his palace and tomb, but on the houses in 
which he invested his funds. With the change of 
ideas they cease to be the symbols of his power and 
glory, and now stand to blazon him as the greatest 
thief of his time, but not of his order. For Paul V. 
enriched the Borghese family beyond belief. Dur- 
ing the first seven years of his reign he had given 
to one nephew, Cardinal Scipione, sufficient funds 
to yield an annual revenue of $150,000. The Pope 
felt the need of making his family the most power- 
ful in Rome, and did it. As a system of temporal 
sovereignty it is the most miserable inventable. 
Having no family of his own, he must enrich and 
endow half a dozen ; and when he dies, a new set 
of rival, and often hostile, families must be more 



1 88 Sights and Insights. 

greatly enriched. It is a plan for bringing into 
eminence and power the meanest kind of men by 
the meanest means. 

Of course there are notable exceptions. Human 
nature repudiates a perpetual glut. One excep- 
tion was Alexander VII., whose family could give 
such banquets that three fish cost two hundred 
and thirty crowns, and the silver plate on which 
they had been served was all thrown into the 
Tiber. Being elected pope he refused to aggran- 
dize his family, saying he had no relations but the 
poor. Setting aside these exceptions, it is the 
most natural result that the papacy should have 
been simply an instrument of extortion ; that it 
beggared all Italy, and sent its Tetzels, with bales 
of indulgences and chests to be filled with money, 
into all parts of the earth. As I lifted myself on 
tiptoe to look into one of the enormous iron-clad 
money-chests of the papacy at St. Angelo yester- 
day, I thought of him whom they claim to have 
directly succeeded, and who was sent without 
money or scrip. Within a few feet of the treasury 
were the holes in the pavement where posts were 
placed for the strangulation of Cardinal CarafFa 
under Pius IV. His brother, the marquis, was 
beheaded the same night. Near by are the dun- 
geons in which Cagliostro, Cellini, and others 



Pontifical Nepotism. i8g 

have languished and died. Truly, as Victor 
Emanuel's soldier-escort said to me, " The Pope is 
always one very good Christian." It may be ; 
but it seems to me that when the devil has been 
tempting the pretended vicegerent of Christ, he 
has not been obliged to offer them all the king- 
doms of the world. They have worshiped him 
for what they could get. 

But a better day has come. The Pope no longer 
lives by extortion, but by charity. So long as 
princes, nobles, and peasants choose to pour in 
their pounds and pence, so long he has abun- 
dance. Very well so long as it is charity and not 
robbery. It alters his tone decidedly. When the 
Empress of Russia called on him, a few days 
since, he did not demand, under threat of dam- 
nation, some wrong to be done. He meekly asked 
that the Romanists of Poland might enjoy re- 
ligious liberty. Good! He sees already that 
religious liberty is a priceless boon. He is open 
to conviction.. This too brief freedom of Rome 
has penetrated even the Vatican. As Galileo 
said, " The world moves." Pontifical nepotism is 
a thing of the past. Let the ennobled (technically) 
families keep their palaces. We want to make 
pilgrimages to the immense piles and behold the 
wonders of art. We want to transfer to the cham- 



190 Sights and Insights. 

bers of the brain those marvelous results of cen- 
turies of aesthetic culture. Let these evidences 
of enormous wealth remain — for they speak of the 
immeasurable power of man's religious nature, that 
can make any sacrifice, endure any torture, live in 
any poverty, if so be that he thinks that he can 
obtain eternal life. 




XXV. 

UNDERGROUND ROME. 

vOMING to Rome, I remembered it was the 
' home of the Pope, the place of St. Peter's ; 
that here was the palace of the Caesars, the 
homes of Horace and Cicero, the forum of the 
ancient republic, and the Coliseum, whose soil 
had drunk the blood of thousands, "butchered to 
make a Roman holiday." But most of all I re- 
membered that here the Gospel had "free course ;" 
that here Paul lived, preached, and perished ; and 
here were yet remaining indications of his won- 
derful success. I glanced hurriedly at the monu- 
ments of antiquity, scarcely noticed the condition 
.of the modern city, and hurried down to Porta San 
Sebastiano, at the southern part of the city, and 
after going along the Via Appia a mile and a 
quarter, came to the Catacomb of Saint Callixtus. 

Having previously provided ourselves with can- 
dles, we arranged with a guide to explore its mys- 
terious depths. Passing down a long flight of 
stairs, we come to galleries cut in the soft tufa 
rock. These galleries are about three feet wide, 



192 Sights and Insights. 

and from six to ten feet high. On each side 
places have been cut for the reception of human 
bodies. They are placed one above another, from 
four to seven in a tier, according to the height of 
the gallery. A thin wall is built in front of each 
body, and either in the cement with which the 
wall is built, or upon a piece of marble slab, is 
cut any inscription desired. These galleries are 
wonderful in extent. They have been explored 
to the length of a thousand miles. They cross each 
other at right angles, like streets in a city. Where 
the nature of the rock will admit of it they are ar- 
ranged in stories like a house, one above another, in 
some places three or four stories deep. It is esti- 
mated that there are places for six millions of bod- 
ies in these tombs about Rome. An idea of their 
vastness maybe gathered from the fact that in 1837 
a school consisting of a master and thirty scholars 
was so effectually lost in them as never to be found. 
One instinctively asks the question, " To whom 
did those tombs belong ?" We have read in all 
our classics that the Romans were accustomed to 
burn their dead. Who are these buried in the 
living rock ? We instantly remember that Christ 
was put in a new tomb hewn out of the rock. It 
occurs to me that his followers would be anxious 

to imitate his example. This inference is con- 
1 



Underground Rome. 193 

firmed by a thousand proofs assuring us that these 
are the bodies of the early Christians. The date 
of the earliest recognized burial is only forty years 
after the death of Christ, and in the year 410 A. D. 
burials entirely ceased. Here, then, we have 
the amazing number of six millions of Christian 
tombs in Rome in three centuries ! Well may we 
say that the word had free course, ran, and was 

glorified ! 

The guide moved on speedily through the long 
dark passages, the feeble light scarcely doing more 
than making darkness visible. We cried "As- 
petto " to him again and again as we wished to 
examine a broken wall, look behind it at the sa- 
cred dust, or before it to the " shapeless sculpture " 
and rudely cut or scratched epitaph. There was 
hardly a yard that would not hold us interested 
spectators, but we had miles and miles to traverse. 
We frequently came to places where the passage 
was enlarged into a kind of subterranean chapel. 
In addition to the bodies that every-where lined 
these passages, we sometimes find rude frescoes 
of Scripture subjects. The most frequent one is 
that of the Good Shepherd bearing the lamb on 
his shoulders. 

There we wandered by the hour, deep in the 
heart of the earth, surrounded on every side by 



194 Sights and Insights. 

the remains of those that were once living and 
active. It often seemed to me that a mistake on 
the part of the guide might involve us in the same 
fate as the master and his school before mentioned. 
Sometimes we descended to a lower tier, ranged 
awhile in its utter darkness, then ascended again 
to an upper story, moved swiftly from one point 
of interest to another, until we ceased to wonder 
that Roman soldiers could not follow the early 
Christians in these their fastnesses. A kind of 
awe comes over one as he remembers this was not 
only the place of the dead, but often of the dying 
— those dying by violence. 

Rome was an implacable enemy of the early 
Church. Up to the year 311 A. D. the Church 
was bitterly persecuted under twelve different em- 
perors. Some of these persecutions were ten 
years long, pressed with all the vigor and venom 
that hate could inspire. Yet by what would 
seem to be a singular provision of Divine Provi- 
dence, Rome had ever guaranteed to its many-na- 
tioned subjects their own rights of sepulture. The 
Christians chose theirs in imitation of Christ, laid 
their dead in the rock, and these rocky caverns 
became to them the places of resort in time when 
they had no place of safety above ground. Not 
only were they places of resort, but also places of 



Underground Rome. 195 

worship ; and these dark caverns have often rung 
with songs of praise. In these little enlarge- 
ments called chapels the rite of baptism has been 
again and again administered, and here men have 
commemorated the dying love of the Lord Jesus 
Christ, when they knew not if they should ever 
meet again. Persecution even followed them into 
these dens and caves of the earth. St. Stephen, 
one of the first bishops, lived here, and here was 
slain. While officiating at service the soldiers en- 
tered. They paused a moment, overcome by his 
holy aspect, but then beheaded him. The Em- 
peror Valerian issued an edict forbidding the Chris- 
tians to meet in these places, and, seeing a multi- 
tude go in one day, ordered his soldiers to wall up 
the place and keep guard at its entrance. No one 
of them ever came out. Pope Damasus, in the 
sixth century, exploring the catacombs, came to 
the place of their last repose, and constructed a 
window that men might look in upon their re- 
mains, and left it as a kind of Christian Pompeii. 

These catacombs have been ravaged again and 
again : by rude soldiers seeking for spoils ; by rob- 
bers who used them as dens in which to hide ; 
by Christians, who sold these bones by the cart- 
load as holy relics of the early saints. 

All knowledge of their location was lost for 



196 Sights and Insights. 

centuries, until the last day of May, 1578. Some 
workmen, digging for pozzolana, opened away into 
their recesses. It was a discovery to the Church, 
equal to the discovery of a continent to an em- 
pire. All Rome thronged out to see the new city 
under ground, greater than the one above ground. 
Since that time they have been diligently ex- 
plored, the passages cleared, the broken arches re-" 
paired, the inscriptions removed, and the frescoes 
copied by men who regarded themselves almost as 
in the holy of holies. Monsieur Bosio spent thirty 
years in studying the catacombs. Monsieur 
D'Agincourt went for six months and stayed fifty 
years. The spirit in which they made their in- 
vestigations may be judged from a remark by 
Monsieur Bosio. A portion of work having caved 
in, and shut him out from means of egress, he 
said : " I began to fear that I should defile this 
holy place by leaving my vile corpse among the 
precious relics of sainted martyrs." 

Seals of treaties have been found in Nineveh, 
but the treaties themselves have gone to dust. 
Here, however, the whole vast book remains. Of 
these inscriptions, over eleven thousand have been 
either removed to the light of day, or faithfully 
and accurately copied. And, singularly enough, 
these inscriptions contain all the history that 



Underground Rome. 197 

we have of the Roman Church for the first three 
centuries. From these inscriptions we glean their 
spirit, their theology, and somewhat of their 
circumstances. 

For example, in the midst of their awful trials 
we discern no spirit of vindictiveness, no gratula- 
tion when the trial had passed away. Many of 
their friends had been subjected to a violent death ; 
they had been torn by wild beasts ; they had been 
slaughtered by the hundred in the Coliseum ; yet 
nothing but the sweetness of grace gleams in these 
inscriptions. Notice this one, written A. D. 161 : 
"While on his knees, and about to sacrifice to 
the true God, he was led away to execution. O 
sad times, when sacred rites and prayers, even in 
caverns, afford no protection to us ! " 

We discern also their views of death. The date 
of their death is regarded as their birthday, or 
merely the day of their departure. There is no 
intimation that they ever thought of their friends 
as in these prepared sepulchers. They speak of 
them as " gone to Christ ; " " borne away by an- 
gels." "You have already gone to be among the 
innocent ones." [No purgatory.] Their firm con- 
fidence in union hereafter is seen in such inscrip- 
tions as these : " You will arise ; " " An eternal 

home ; " " Sophronia, you will live with your 

13 



198 Sights and Insights. 

friends; you will live in God. Dear Sophronia, 
you will always live in God. You live." 

Their surroundings and social position may be 
inferred from the frequent illiteracy of the inscrip- 
tions. The spelling is often incorrect, the execu- 
tion frequently inferior, and sometimes scratched 
with the point of the trowel in the cement while 
yet soft. They buried the slave and his master 
together, for with them there was " neither Jew 
nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female, but all 
were one in Christ Jesus." The Gospel alone had 
power to break down this prejudice of all ages. 

The following inscription informs us that the 
priests of this early time were married : " Petronia, 
a priest's wife. The type of modesty. In this 
place I lay my bones. Spare your tears, dear hus- 
band and daughter, and believe it is forbidden to 
weep for one who lives in God." 

Their devotion for their children is wholly ex- 
ceptional from the life they saw around them. 
Witness the following inscription : " Navarina, in 
peace ; a sweet soul, who lived sixteen years and 
five months; a soul sweet as honey." They also 
practiced infant baptism, and did not immerse 
adults. 

Concerning their theology, we see they held to 
the spirituality of God. This is the more remark- 



Underground Rome. 199 

able when we consider that they were surrounded 
with many pagan representations of the deity. 
Only once did their frescoes attempt to represent 
the Father. It is evident that they drew their 
theology solely from the canonical Scriptures. 
All essential doctrines may be recognized in in- 
scriptions and frescoes. None of what we call 
papal heresies existed in the early Church. They 
gave the cup to the laity. They accorded no 
worship to Mary. Peter was not eminent above 
his fellow-disciples. Such a thing as holy water 
was unknown. All the figures of the Old Testa- 
ment that pointed to the cross are produced 
again and again. 

We' are frequently presented with the sacrifice 
of Isaac ; Moses as a school -master, to bring us to 
Christ ; the burning bush ; the reception of the 
law ; manna ; and that living rock, which was 
Christ ; the ascent of Elijah ; the three Hebrew 
children in the fiery furnace ; Daniel in the lions' 
den ; and Jonah of whom Christ said he was a 
type of his own resurrection. Precious to these 
men, in their fiery trials, were such deliverances as 
the form of the Fourth brought to the furnace, or 
the angel brought to the den of lions. 

Eagerly we ask, What thought they of Christ ? 
Every prominent event in his life was portrayed — 



200 Sights and Insights. 

his birth, the worship of the angels, his baptism, 
the 'marriage supper, his blessing little children, 
healing the blind, riding into Jerusalem, talking 
with the woman at the well, multiplying the loaves 
and fishes, raising Lazarus, rebuking Peter, and 
his ascent from Olivet. 

Did they think him divine ? Surely. Christ was 
worshiped. Praises were addressed to him. Even 
Pliny says of the early Christians, " They were 
wont to sing hymns unto Christ as God." He is 
represented as on a throne, crowned, the Alpha 
and Omega. Such phrases as these are to be met 
with : " Baptized into God Christ," " Live in God 
Christ," " Live in Christ God," " The Everlasting 
God Christ," "The Eternal God Christ." 

We have Bible-teaching in the Bible, but here 
that teaching was embodied in belief and action. 
The belief was implicit, the action sublime. The 
soil of the Coliseum has lost all tinge of the blood 
of thousands poured out in the arena ; but here 
are still to be found the bodies which were there 
sundered from life by the swift sword of the gladi- 
ator, or the sudden spring and craunch of the wild 
beast. I did not know but the one on my right 
hand, marked with that simple M., which showed 
that his blood had been shed to make Rome 
drunk with the blood of the saints, was slain in the 



Ufiderground Rome. 201 



r a 



very presence of the beast Nero. His vile dust, 
long ago, was scattered widely, but this is here 
preserved. I stood beside the grave of Saint Ce- 
cilia, whose history interested me more than I can 
tell. 

I came up from the depths and traversed again 
the long Lapidarian gallery where on one side 
these inscriptions are preserved, and on the other 
inscriptions from pagan tombs. On the one side 
is rude lettering, bad grammar, very poor art, but 
hope, love, and eternal life ; on the other is elegance 
of diction, beauty of art, but despair and death. I 
could but go again to those sacred haunts, and, 
lingering in their darkness, think of the power that 
changed timid slaves into lords of earth and in- 
heritors of heaven. 



CTOADOWt 




XXVI. 

EXPRESSION BY ART. 

mONTHS of wandering through long galle- 
ries and gazing on acres of canvas have 
wrought their legitimate result. I begin to know 
a little art. For example : I see that boundary- 
lines distinguish schools of painting as clearly as 
Alps divide nations. 

People differing in spirit and purpose have their 
art characteristics as clearly as different styles of 
armor for their warriors ; and individual artists 
leave their personal marks upon their canvas as 
clearly as Paul or Cicero stamped their style upon 
the speaking page. 

You come into the school of Holland, of which 
the elder and younger Teniers are good examples, 
and you find the utmost fidelity of rendering. 
They cannot paint a tree or a mountain, for they 
have no canvas large enough to allow them to be 
faithful in details. But they can paint a foaming 
beer mug with as much care and exactness as if it 
were to be the only copy of the newly-discovered 
table of the ten commandments, and paint it 



Expression by Art. 203 

far more con amore. A village fair, a company 
of topers in a grog-shop, the stall of an ancient 
cobbler, or the spreading efflorescence of their 
national rose — the cabbage — is finished with a per- 
fectness of detail that is exceedingly Dutch. 

I saw a picture in Dresden, by a Dutch artist 
named Frumente, which had for its subject the 
resurrection of Lazarus. He had no passion of 
love to give us the eager faces of the sisters ; no 
imagination to portray the incoming soul, the first 
throbs of life under the ribs of death ; no pious 
genius to catch the look of divine power in the 
face of Christ ; but he had literal matter-of-fact 
stupidity enough to represent Mary shielding her 
nostrils with her robe, and a soldier with his nose 
turned almost upside down. " By this time he 
stinketh " was the one great literal fact appre- 
hended by that painter. 

There are many Dutchmen who were never born 
in Holland, and who never painted the resurrec- 
tion of Lazarus. 

The Constantinopolitan school of painters were 
wont to represent Christ as emaciated in the last 
degree by his night of sorrow. He seems like one 
who had died of marasmus instead of crucifixion. 
Literally, there was no form, nor comeliness, nor 
beauty in him that we should desire, as they rep- 



204 Sights and Insights. 

resented him. Their idea ran through centuries, 
and you may point out every picture whose author 
had felt the influence of that school. 

It even reached as far as Florence, and the lank 
figures that may be dimly traced in the mosaics 
of the Baptistry unmistakably declare their origin. 

You know a picture of Rubens (except his 
wonderful Crucifixion and Descent from the Cross) 
by his great blowsy women, built on the Dutch 
model ; and when you see the exceptions, which 
are among the best pictures in the world, you are 
sorry that he ever painted any thing else. All that 
he painted for a price for licentious France sadly 
detract from his fame. Titian writes his name in 
the rich clear colors of an Italian sky, caught from 
the heavens, and embalmed on canvas. Raphael 
has a many-sidedness that refuses to be classified. 
You gaze into the face of the Sistine Madonna at 
Dresden, confessedly the best picture from human 
fingers, and you exult with her in the worthy pride 
-of motherhood. She stands in that clear light 
that halos every holy mother, a creator right be- 
side her God. You feel yourself, Protestant as 
you are, half inclined to worship and adore. 

You glance aside for a moment to the child that 
she presents, and when you eome back to the 
face it has changed; there must be a human soul 



Expression by Art. 205 

behind it. A solemn prescience of sorrow is look- 
ing out of those eyes. Your own eyes fill with 
tears. That lip seems to tremble and hardly re- 
strain itself from a cry. Again you come to the 
face — it is full of open-eyed wonder now. It is 
amazed at being called to be the mother of the 
Lord. It says, "And can it be that thou, my Lord, 
shouldst come to me ? " And at the same time 
it reminds you that this divine honor could not 
be accepted without the cross of human shame. 

This variety of expression is seen to some ex- 
tent in the divine child she holds, and which may 
be said to be almost the only worthy picture of 
the infant Redeemer, the chiefest among ten thou- 
sand, and the one altogether lovely. I can ac- 
count for this different effect, produced at differ- 
ent times by the same picture, only by inferring 
that a different feeling is expressed in different 
features — as wonder in the open eye, tender sor- 
row in the curved mouth. And yet it is so painted 
that every expression blends in a perfect face ; 
but whatever expression you first catch holds you 
and moves you. Study seemed to confirm the 
conjecture. 

The art of the Middle Ages distinguished itself 
as being almost exclusively devoted to that subject 
most dear to the human heart — the Incarnation. 



206 Sights and Insights. 

The poet could not send his thoughts through 
the printed page ; the singer's song died when his 
voice became silent. So the poet wrote in colors, 
and the singer let the music of light and harmony 
of proportion utter his song. So written, the 
untaught peasant and the little child could read 
the sweet story of old. 

It is interesting to note how different nations 
came out of that period and tendency that devoted 
all art to illustrate the life of the Son of God in 
the flesh. 

You come into the galleries of modern paint- 
ers in France, and you find that the frenzy of the 
Revolution and the madness of infidelity have del- 
uged the fields of art with blood at Versailles, and 
with every constrained attitude and maniacal ex- 
pression of frenzy at the Luxembourg. You feel at 
once that you are in a community where the sweet 
joys of home have little power, where the holy 
comforts of religion are not sought, where out- 
side show is preferred to inner worth. You are 
sure that such straining after effect is unnatural, 
and leads either to the mad-house, or the close 
chamber and a fatal brazier of charcoal. 

You cross the channel, half weary of art, tired 
of so many acres of canvas, half questioning 
whether you will pursue the subject any farther. 



Expression by Art. 207 

You go into the National, and the Rojal Acade- 
my as a matter of habit. You are surprised. A 
new world of art opens at once. Here are beauti- 
ful landscapes, and you have seen hardly one on 
the whole Continent. A very few of Claude Lo- 
raine, two or three of Poussin and Salvator Rosa. 
Here is a turning to nature. In Italy homes are 
dark dens. No attempt is made to lighten them. 
But here God's beauties are brought into the 
house. Therefore, home scenes become possible 
to the artist. He puts them on the canvas, beau- 
tiful with human love. Domestic animals are 
deemed worthy of portraiture, and you feel your- 
self to be in a country that is not living for effect, 
but is quietly enjoying its own consciousness of in- 
ner worth. It is turning lovingly to those beau- 
ties that the Lord loved in Paradise. 

I often wonder at the forceful expressions that 
these flat pictures, and cold, colorless marbles 
carry. When I consider the difficulties in the 
way of such expression I marvel at the success at- 
tained. Guido had been for a long time laboring 
at his painting of the Crucifixion. He had a man 
tied to a cross for a model. He could easily por- 
tray the body from his example. But how could 
he paint a dying face ? In a wild frenzy he caught 
a knife and plunged it into the bosom of his 



208 Sights and Insights. 

model. He then caught the shadows as they fell 
over the face from the dark valley, and laid them 
on the canvas. 

I was anxious to see the work of an artist who 
hesitated at no price, not even that of murder, so 
that he might find true and forceful expression. 

It was as might have been expected — a face 
more full of fear than of love. It had more of the 
dying culprit a Jew might desire to see, than the 
conquering Lord a Christian might adore. True 
success cannot be purchased by crime, not even 
in low departments, much less in the high. 

The difficulties out of which art wrings its suc- 
cess are so numerous and great that we wonder at 
the measure of that success. 

Man has various ways of making the fleeting 
conceptions of his soul permanent. So has God. 
Men most naturally embody the soul's action in 
words ; God, in worlds. Man arranges his form- 
less conceptions into relations to each other 
through long series of bodiless evolutions, and 
then fixes the conclusion by means of a written 
page, a picture, a statue, or a machine. God em- 
bodies his, in pictures wide as the valleys, high as 
the mountains, beautiful as the flowers ; in statues 
capable of motion, and showing a thousand vary- 
ing feelings. The relation of the page, picture, 



Expression by Art. 209 

statue, or machine to the mind that produced it 
is intricate and difficult of apprehension. To read 
back from the embodied expression to the mind 
is never done by all, never perfectly done by any. 
The relation of the creation to the Creator is feebly 
apprehended. God had higher thoughts and 
deeper feelings in creating than any creature has in 
beholding. We never know a man by his permanent 
material expressions ; nor God by his. The lov- 
ing wife or child knows the artist better than the 
student of his paintings and statues knows him. 

We have only inferior materials for expression. 
Think of the difficulty of making cold rock ex- 
press the joy of Eve finding herself alive. Material 
must stand for immaterial. The rock is the best 
expression of durableness, but it disintegrates right 
under our eye, and the durableness of eternity is 
unexpressed. There is nothing better than flowers 
and rainbows to express our conceptions of color, 
nothing better than air and its liquid flow to ex- 
press relations of harmony. They are utterly in- 
sufficient, even for our present conceptions. We 
know of music too fine for air to be its medium. 
And, concerning God's thought, it must be written, 
" Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, the things God 
hath prepared for those that love him." Paul — 
caught up to perceive them — says the words 



210 Sights and Insights, 

were unspeakable, the conceptions not possibly 
wordable. 

But for man's expression of himself, the difficul- 
ties are insuperable. He cannot embody his feel- 
ings with a word, and emotions are very transient 
and fleeting. Before the page is written the emo- 
tion is gone or changed ; much more before the 
colors are mixed and laid, the clay molded, and 
the marble hewn. And the very charm of most 
emotions lies in this transitory character. There 
is no statue equal to a child, no picture like a face. 
Every man has a better gallery of art in his chil- 
dren than any king ever gathered. They respond, 
for a moment, to feelings as flitting as the dancing 
shadows of leaves, as bright as the sunlight that 
silvers the ripples of a lake. Art cannot touch 
this class of feelings — for this flesh is living, mo- 
bile as air, traversed with nerves of lightning 
quickness, flushed with floods of varying color. 
What impossibility to make marble as expressive, 
and the formless dead level of paint as full of 
life as these feelings are ! 

And if we could, we should weary of the un- 
changed expression that stone or canvas must 
carry. We delight in progression — backward, 
rather than none at all. We want to see action 
consummated. We cannot abide a M'Clellan 



Expression by Art. 211 

policy. We cry out in torment at the steady drone 
of any note of an organ ; we are in raptures when 
its various notes combine in linked sweetness, or 
ascend the steps of power. 

Art is shut up to a narrow range of emotions. 
The jolliest man would not be painted laughing. 
Even Rembrandt's portrait of himself, with his 
wife on his knee, a half-emptied glass in his hand, 
and a bacchanal laugh on his face, clings horribly 
to the memory, and makes men wish that artists 
would not attempt to make perpetual what may 
be pleasing because transient. No artist would 
paint positions we assume at every step. They 
would be declared as impossible to human mech- 
anism as the position of the left foot of Horace 
Mann's statue before the Boston State-House. 

Not only is the field of art narrow, but the diffi- 
culties in that field are insurmountable. It must 
embody spiritual with material — make tricksy 
Ariel out of cast iron. It must put into perma- 
nent form the few transient emotions it does ven- 
ture upon, and whose chief charm lies in the fact 
of their transitoriness. But, in addition to these 
already commented on, it has difficulties in its own 
nature. Paint has no form, and sculpture has no 
color. So true is it that paint has no form, that 
in many departments it is not even possible to im- 



212 Sights and Insights. 

itate the form that really exists in nature. The 
form of the leaf, maple, pine, oak, cordate, acerose, 
sinuate, cannot be imitated on the small canvas 
on which we condense God's wide pictures. The 
artist must find larger forms — as trunks, mode of 
putting out limbs, general outline of the whole 
tree, or masses of them — to imitate. And since 
the painter has no forms, he seeks to atone for this 
lack by extravagances of color. So the fairest 
faces get shades that Othello the Moor could not 
equal. Rubens covers his blowzy women with 
black and blue spots, as if their husbands prac- 
ticed the German habit of whipping their wives. 
He makes the blood seem to exude from every 
pore of the face of one who is struggling to erect 
the cross. Yet these extravagances of color are 
not offensive, because they are put to the account 
of form. So the sculptor puts on extravagances 
of form because he has no color. No man would 
buy a bust or statue that had a natural neck.. 
Carved from measurements, it would seem so frail 
and slender that it would distress one with fear 
for the safety of the bead. Accustomed to see it 
dressed, as in man, or shaded with massy hair, as 
in woman, we must have it larger than nature to 
seem natural. And though no man covets for his 
own, and no woman likes to see on another — except 



Expression by Art. 213 

a rival — a large neck, yet when the form petrifies 
into marble, this feature, rightly managed, is only 
suggestive of abundant channels to carry food and 
fire to the brain. It tells of intellectual, not ani- 
mal, power. 

Sculpture heaps muscle . on Hercules hurling 
Lycias from the crag, till be looks as if he might 
fling him a thousand miles. It is no excrescence, 
but wonderfully obviates the lack of color. Sculpt- 
ure is not only deprived of the eye, the most ex- 
pressive organ of the soul, but is actually obliged 
to accept a deformity in its place. This deformity 
must be overcome, and this lack made up in other 
ways. It seems impossible. Art is obliged to 
force into its service for expression all conceiv- 
able accessories. The charmed lizard that is list- 
ening on the stump, where the shepherd-boy sits 
playing his pipe in the Boston Library, is as ex- 
pressive of the power of his music as the sweet- 
ness of the lad's face. Our Rogers is unequaled 
in seizing on the little, often-unnoticed things of 
life, to make them tell their story. The broken 
basket and shredded pants t£ll of poverty. And 
the whole African nature bursts upon us, as the 
aged man learns to read of a child in the midst of 
his work, and young mischief cannot forbear to 

neglect his lesson to tickle the old man's foot. 

14 



214 Sights and Insights. 

Yet accessories would be of no avail did not 
every stroke of the chisel, and every pass of the 
pencil, in every part of the work, leave its touch 
of power. To place these touches of power, and 
to discover them when made, requires and cul- 
tures a nicety of observation, and a delicacy of 
perception, that constitutes one of the chief values 
of art. 

But the value of victory is proportioned to the 
difficulty of its achievement. When once a wor- 
thy emotion has had force enough in the soul of 
the artist to make the solid marble all alive with 
it, then it stands, age after age, to stir that worthy 
feeling in the breasts of others. 



XXVII. 

PUTTING A VOLCANO UNDER FOOT. 

jTT T is just four o'clock in the morning. I am not 
Qgi accustomed to wake so early; but Italy has an 
industrious and efficient awakener. I have 
made an important classical discovery; not, in- 
deed, how Monte Testaccio at Rome came to be 
made of broken pottery ; not the site of Troy, 
but the nature of the shirt that Nessus sent to 
Hercules. I understood perfectly how it drove 
Hercules mad ; how he tore off his flesh to get rid 
of its effects ; how he was finally consumed in 
fire. Nessus sent him a woolen shirt full of 
fleas. It perfectly meets all the conditions. 

I went up Vesuvius four years ago. I went up 
yesterday, and would be glad to go up to-day. It 
is counted a hardship ; it is a triumph. Titus 
never felt so grand, entering Rome with chained 
and captive thousands at his heels, and yellow 
Tiber trembling in its banks by the replica- 
tion of the shouts of all the city. I had climbed 
to a higher throne. No one ever sees this world 
rightly till he gets above it. House lots look 



2 1 6 Sights and Insights. 

small, and the soul, losing all thought of moiling to 
get them, rises, soars, feasts, and lives in the broad 
realm that God made infinite in order to give it 
room. 

We left Naples early ; drove through some of the 
most miserable scenes this miserable world can 
show. Blind beggars ran along by the carriage for 
rods. Masses of rags, that only seemed moved 
by the vermin in them, limped along the road with 
an unearthly whine for money. A slight elevation 
enabled twenty to gather round the carriage. I 
never so longed for a good rawhide. If I had pos- 
sessed one, no Neapolitan beggar would have 
questioned my generosity. When we came to the 
place to buy sticks or canes there rose round us a 
forest. And when we had bought what we wanted 
there rose one universal howl that we had paid 
the wrong parties. I should suppose that our five 
sticks belonged to about twenty different parties, 
and no one had got his pay. 

In three hours we reached the Hermitage, where 
the Government has established an observatory to 
watch the proceedings of the volcano. Its erup- 
tions are so connected with electricity that the 
volcano foretells its own internal disturbance, by 
the operations of the magnetic needle, long before 
it gives any signal to sight or ear. We scrambled 



Putting a Volcano tinder Foot. 217 

over fields of lava for three quarters of an hour to 
the base of the cone, where the real labor of the 
ascent commenced. 

Originally there was neither volcano nor eleva- 
tion here. It was a smiling tract of level land as 
ever the ardent sun kissed into blushes of flowers. 
Then came the underground upheaval. A fissure 
opened east and west. The compacted strata of 
the lower world were revealed. They rose higher 
and higher, and the wound gaped open a mile wide. 
Then the seething lava followed, cooling in the 
fissures, damming all the outlets, and remaining a 
lake of fire, with its northern shore somewhat 
higher than the southern. Occasional overflows 
took place, and a long stream of liquid rock took 
its way to the plain. Of course the surface of the 
lake would cool, except at a few points where the 
internal forces. demanded outlet. Here, bubbling 
and boiling, they spluttered their red hot wrath 
over the edge, and a kind of circular rim rose 
round every hole. Thus several large cones or 
little mountains rose on the treacherous surface 
of the cooled lake. When great ebullitions oc- 
curred, these few vent-holes would not be found 
enough, and one of these little mountains would 
be torn out by the roots, and hurled upon, or over, 
the others. 



218 Sights and Insights. 

In process of time these various cones, with a 
core of fire, encroached on each other, making one 
great cone, with particular liability to smoke and 
erupt through the old vents. That is just what 
has happened. It is as easy to read from the 
mountain record as from a book. A picture of 
Vesuvius, made about the time of Christ, has been 
recently discovered at Pompeii, and there is no 
central cone to the mountain. It is no higher than 
the lips of the old wound, or the wrathful edges of 
the old broken boil. 

This cone is now one thousand feet high, and 
has a base of about a mile. It was this we now 
essayed to climb. It is composed of lava and 
ashes, which are one and the same thing. They 
only differ as sand and sandstone. Where you 
found footing on the scraggy lava it was only a 
question of muscle to mount; but where you 
trod in ashes, and got up one step and slipped back 
two, it was a question of temper as well. Another 
element entered into the problem of temper. The 
mountain swarmed with men and boys, all anxious 
to help you — one with a strap to pull before, and 
another to boost behind. They all seem to think 
that the principle that led the girl to marry a fel- 
low to be rid of him inheres in all human nature, 
especially in woman's. It did not in our ladies. 



Putting a Volcano under Foot. 219 

It is three fourths of an hour's tough scramble. 
Going up stairs two at a jump would be rest com- 
pared to it. 

But we leave the nuisances below. We go up ; 
yes, up to God. Such things do not follow thither. 
We look down on craters of former years — for the 
lava seldom or never overflows this high summit. 
It breaks out a hole in the side of the mountain at 
the foot of the cone. Here we can mark the ex- 
tent and meandering of the overflow of every 
blackened stream. You can often determine the 
age of the overflow on a given number of acres in 
the plain below by the amount of verdure that has 
come to cover its nakedness. 

The mountain feels hot to your feet. Turn over a 
small mass of lava anywhere and smoke immedi- 
ately rushes out. 

We pass various places still smoking, to show 
where there were cores of former cones. Yes, we 
pass ; for, like the Irishman trying to kiss his be- 
loved, we are anxious to get at the crater's mouth. 
We succeed, as I trust he did. 

On the very edge of this hole the rocks are so 
hot that putting our sticks into crevices not two 
feet deep, they burst into flame. But the aw- 
fully torn, rent, seamed, bottomless abyss, smoking 
in every fissure, groaning with a crush of heaved 



220 Sights and Insights. 

boulders, canopied with sulphurous smoke, can- 
not be described. We walked round the thin edge. 
It sloped inward and outward about equally, and 
in some places was as sharp as the ridge of a steep- 
roofed house. When the wind drove the smoke 
toward us we went down with our noses in the hot 
ashes, for the sulphurous fumes could not be 
breathed. Then when the wind blew it from us 
we would spring up to gaze into the awful depth 
of the fiery mountain. 

We overlooked the crater of last year. It is on 
the north side, and is still groaning with unquieted 
turmoil. When the descending stream reached the 
plain it divided, to spare a peasant's little house, 
but closed again beyond it, leaving the saved house 
on a small green island in an ocean of fire. The 
cooled billows of lava are almost frightful to look 
at. The projecting ridges of the pushed mass, first 
cooled, and then pushed on again, overlaying and 
crowding one another, assumed all conceivable 
shapes ; and it requires some matter-of-factness not 
to feel that it is a black mass of horrid forms of 
living things, writhing in unutterable pain and ter- 
ror. Here is the form of a man with head and feet 
buried under a knot of serpents, there the hind- 
quarters of a horse, and every-where demoniac 
forms that startle with their writhed expressions. 



Putting a Volcano under Foot. 221 

The view from the top is of surpassing beauty. 
Conceive of the lovely bay on one side, blue as the 
air, and so shaded by the floating shadows of the 
floating islands in the sky, so shimmering in the 
sunshine, and so variegated with color, that you 
absolutely cannot tell which is water and which is 
air ; conceive of the snow-crowned Apennines on 
the other side, not looking in the least like mount- 
ains of earth, but like a real glimpse of the glory 
of the other world ; imagine the beauty of green 
field and shining houses filling all between, and 
yourself not so much upheld as floating above 
the picture, and imagination paints what pen can- 
not describe. 

From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a 
step. Nothing could be more ridiculous than the 
coming down. We choose a place where there is 
no hard lava, only soft ashes. Every step is a leap 
of twenty feet. A man does not look human. He 
is -simply a confused blur of arms and legs attached 
to a hub. He may look like a falling angel— I don't 
know. He sinks mid-leg deep in the soft ashes at 
every step. And when he fails to extricate a leg 
in time, and spreads himself head foremost down 
the steep decline, he singularly resembles a gigan- 
tic flying squirrel. When he gets up he looks like 
one of Vulcan's coal boys just out of the heart of 



222 Sights and Insights. 

the mountain. He comes down in three minutes 
the distance it took him forty to go up. 

For a few days we have lingered here in the 
Old World, investigating the wasted ruins of the 
works of Roman emperors before and in the times 
of Christ; also exploring sites of towns that 
Greece planted, and which were in decay before 
Rome had even a name. Let us give a little time 
to Greece itself, and then turn our faces to a land 
that was old before Greece was born. 



XXVIII. 

POSSIBILITIES AND ACTUALITIES OF 
ATHENS. 

iENTELICUS was full of nymphs, graces, 
■$f g°ds, and goddesses, all prisoned in its snowy- 
marble. Phidias and Praxiteles came with 
hammer and chisel to break away the fetters and 
bid them stand forth in their beauty. Acropolis 
was a vast throne of acres, lifted hundreds of feet 
above the plain, on which these gods might sit, and 
stand ; a glorious pyramid of grace. The Attic 
plain was rich in soil, gorgeous with flowers, fra- 
grant with thyme, drowsy with the hum of bees, 
shimmering with the meandering streams, melliflu- 
ous with the names of Ilissus and Cephisus. 
Attic aborigines were great, strong, docile men, who 
laid gigantic Pelasgic constructions of mighty 
stones that endure to this day ; so docile that they 
welcomed teachers from a foreign land ; so imagi- 
native that they filled earth, sea, and air with liv- 
ing creations ; so devout that they reverently wor- 
shiped all known gods with a fervor and self- 
sacrifice that ought to shame us, and still had 



224 Sights and Insights. 

reverence for those unknown ; so full of hardihood 
that Solon and Lycurgus, preaching and ordaining 
austerity as means of physical victory, were at 
first more welcomed and followed than Alcibiades 
setting an example of luxury ; so surrounded by 
rival States, as to call out all possible peaceful 
energy ; so assaulted by foreign foes, as to summon 
to the last possible strain every fiber of power to 
contend for very life ; possessed of unheard of 
liberty for centuries; fired by the grandest elo- 
quence known to the race ; accustomed, to a con- 
stant consideration of all questions of public 
policy ; and, finally, highest possibility of all, re- 
ceiving the offer of the glorious Gospel of Jesus by 
the very lips of the grandest apostle. These 
were the elements of success for Athens, the pos- 
sibilities that waited for its possession. What 
were the actualities ? 

Sculptors waved their wands, and the multitu- 
dinous gods marched from Pentelicus to Athens. 
Columns and capitals, friezes and foundations, al- 
tars and temples, came in such numbers, and of 
such grand proportions, that we almost cease to 
count it fable that they were drawn by Apollo's 
lute. Men endured hardness as good soldiers ; 
grew to sublime manhood ; counted their lives not 
dear unto themselves ; despised death ; went to 



Athens. 225 

battle as to a feast ; never counted their tens nor 
the opposing thousands, but only asked if their 
death then and there could best serve the State ; 
gave up their homes to the enemy that they might 
defeat him on the sea ; erecting such a State that 
its very ruins, after two thousand years, are an 
amazement and a study for us to-day. Let us 
glance at them : There is the Temple of Theseus, 
composed of thirty-six columns, so perfect that 
twenty-five years ago it was the most perfect build- 
ing in Athens. On the western brow of the Acrop- 
olis stands the gate and its adjuncts, compared to 
which the famous Brandenburg gate at Berlin is 
nothing. Beside it stands the charming little 
Temple of Victory, from whom they took the 
wings, hoping that she would never fly away. In- 
side the gate, and just at the left, stood the statue 
of Minerva, fifty-five feet high, on a pedestal 
twenty feet high ; her gilded casque and spear- 
point the beacon of the Attic sailors as they came 
home to Minerva's city. A little farther to the 
east, the Erectheum — a temple over the spot where 
Neptune struck his trident into the solid rock and 
caused it to gush with water to this day, and where 
Minerva planted the olive, so dear and profitable 
to the people, and where both the gods were wor- 
shiped. This temple is of the finest workman- 



226 Sights and Insights. 

ship ; its moldings exquisite as Mechlin lace ; its 
capitals graved with as much care as the outlines 
of a portrait or bust. Immediately south of this 
stands the wreck of the noble Parthenon — the 
Temple of Minerva. Its platform, raised four 
hundred feet above the city, is two hundred and 
ninety-three by one hundred and thirty-three feet. 
On this are erected forty-seven columns, thirty- 
seven feet high and six and a half feet in diame- 
ter. These are surmounted by a frieze, sculptured 
with the magnificent representations of the great 
Panathenaic procession ; of the exploits of Her- 
cules, Theseus, and the contests of the Centaurs 
with the Lapithse. Inside the columns is a corri- 
dor eight feet wide, and then thewalls of the tem- 
ple. Within this was another statue of Minerva, 
so magnificent that the statue of Victory, which 
she held as -a scepter in her hand, was six feet 
high. This building remained almost complete 
nearly two thousand years till ruthlessly destroyed 
by man. But after six thousand cannon-balls 
have been rained upon it, and a magazine of pow- 
der exploded within it, the monument of beauty 
is the world's wonder to-day. 

As I walked through its immensity, and along 
its silent corridors in the darkness, it seemed like 
a mammoth skeleton — the bleaching, broken bones 



Athens, 227 

of a gigantic life — from which the soul had fled. 
What intensity of life it took to rear these struct- 
ures ! What a religious fervor it speaks that they 
were reared to an imaginary goddess ! But soon 
the moon looked over Hymettus. Its light seemed 
to bring back the departed life. The adytum was 
no longer empty. Broken columns took the forms 
of statues. Strange shadows seemed like living 
forms. Themistocles, Pericles, Lycurgus, Demos- 
thenes, Plato, Euripides, and Leonidas, seemed 
walking there. The great Panathenaic procession 
came down from the friezes, and with horses, 
chariots, banners, and victims garlanded for sacri- 
fice, swept in at the western Propylaea, through the 
grove of statues and votive offerings, to the east- 
ern end, wheeled, and came into the magnificent 
temple, and did homage to the august Athene. 

But still the idea would return that it was a ruin. 
As I went down the hill by the ruined Odeum of 
Regilla, by the marble-seated theater, with its in- 
scribed seats reserved for the priests, to the Tem- 
ple of Zeus Olympius — of whose one hundred and 
twenty-six columns, seventy-five feet high, and 
seven and a half feet in diameter, covering an area 
of four hundred by one hundred and ninety-seven 
feet, only sixteen columns yet remain standing — 
ruin, ruin stared me in the face. I could but ask 



228 Sights and Insights. 

myself, Why ? With so many elements of success, 
so many principles of stability, such unequaled 
success, why ruin ? Is the race to rise high only 
to fall more utterly ? Is there no continued prog- 
ress, no assured perpetuity for progress made ? 

It occurred to me that Greece had too narrow 
an ambition, too low an ideal, too limited an in- 
spiration. They strove only for Athens' liberty, 
not for man's. Their ideal was finite beauty, as 
embodied in the human form. It could inspire a 
Phidias, but it had no element of infinity about it. 
It could not carry them through an infinite series 
of progressions. It could wonderfully advance 
the race, lift it to a height never before attained ; 
but it lacked power to rise above the earth. 

What it lacked, Paul came and offered them ; 
offered an inspiration that had no limit ; an ideal 
so high, that man may ceaselessly rise and not ex- 
ceed it ; an ambition wide as the race, and that 
destroys all enemies by loving them into friends. 
This seems to me the only element lacking to 
Grecian progress without limit, and stability be- 
yond peril. In this view, lowly Areopagus rises 
above sublime Acropolis, humble Paul above the 
divine Plato. How often did I stand, amid the 
fading glories of an Athenian snnset and the gath- 
ering shades of darkness, so fitting to the ruins of 



Athens. 229 

such a State, on that rocky summit where Paul 
preached, and think of the results of an accepted 
Christianity added to a Grecian culture ! I really 
believe there would have been no descending sun, 
no dark night of ages. Culture would have been 
complemented by grace, human power aided by 
divine, and narrow human knowledge widened, 
heightened, and made perfect by God's. 

It is not too late yet. Pentelicus is as full of 
graces as ever — every element of success as effi- 
cient as when Marathon was made immortal. For- 
tunately, Paul's doctrine is accepted now. God is 
not ignorantly but intelligently worshiped. It was 
a joy to hear little children singing, in the accents 
of Demosthenes, to " Our Father, God," and not 
to Zeus and Pan. Even the Greek Church has 
freed itself from the debasing superstitions that 
cripple it elsewhere, and is a Church of spiritual 
power. Looking for the real and highest glories 
of Greece, I turned away from its ruins to its 
churches and rising university ; from its old, nar- 
row liberty for self and slavery for the world, to 
its new, broad idea of universal freedom ; from its 
past, to its future ; from its* old, vanished Athene 
to its present God. The grandest actualities of 
Greece are in the present and future. 

Philosophy declares that no nation thoroughly 

15 



230 Sights and Insights. 

demoralized can ever rise again by its own inherent 
energy ; and, unless help comes to it from with- 
out, it must continue in its degradation, or more 
likely perish utterly. History stands by and points 
to Nineveh, Babylon, Egypt, as examples in proof. 
But help has come from without to Greece. Amer- 
ica has sent the same Gospel that Paul brought. 
Under its benign influence, stimulated by its di- 
vine power, Athens has advanced more in forty 
years past than in four centuries previous. The 
young king sits in his palace pleased with pros- 
perity. But the one who has accomplished it is 
the King of kings, through his minister, Dr. Hill, 
missionary from America. 



XXIX. 

EGYPT. 

OUTH of the Mediterranean Sea lies a vast 
desert, three thousand miles long and one 
thousand miles wide, nearly as large as the 
United States. Mythology informs us how it 
became a desert. Phaethon, the Young America 
of his day, extorted, by the aid of his doting 
mother, permission of his father Apollo to drive 
the chariot of the sun for just once. Anxious to 
show off his team and himself, he lashed the fire- 
breathing horses into an ungovernable speed. 
They broke away from the regular road, ran over 
all that tract of the heavens we call The Milky 
Way, leaving such sparks along the road as glow 
there yet. Then they came down to earth, and 
ran over the north end of Africa, burning up all 
the soil in the region now called the desert, and 
making such heat that the inhabitants are black 
to this day. And had not Jupiter knocked the 
young man into the river Eridanus with a well- 
aimed thunderbolt, and restored the sun to his 



232 Sights and Insights. 

proper course, there would never have been any 
more young men to take warning from his fate. 

Into this realm of death has been thrust a wedge- 
like area of life. It is somewhat blunt for the first 
hundred miles ; extremely slim and tapering the 
rest of the way. Down this long furrow comes the 
mysterious river Nile. It is the river of life to the 
country. It flows from the thrones of monarch 
mountains far away. 

On your way to visit Egypt you stop at Rome, 
and are amazed at the evidences of antiquity that 
are exhumed from the teeming soil. But when 
they show you the oldest thing in Rome, it is an 
obelisk taken from Egypt after its decline. You 
pass on to Greece, whose sun had passed its zenith 
before Rome rose, and delving in the beginning of 
its literature, you are carried away to older Phoeni- 
cia. But Egypt had a developed literature before 
Phoenicia had a name. The first sign of life after 
the deluge was seen on the Nile. And Thebes 
was the capital of a great kingdom two thou- 
sand seven hundred years before Christ — more 
than a thousand years before the Exode. In wis- 
dom Egypt was the eye of the world. In art it 
exceeded the attainments of our boasted day. 
And in the application of mechanical forces, and 
the erection of great structures, we have much to 



Egypt, 233 

learn before we can stand beside these men of 
three thousand years ago. 

What is the country to-day ? When you enter 
the harbor at Alexandria you perceive that it has 
no wharves nor docks. You are landed successfully 
if you keep your temper. But you are landed into 
a new world. Houses, trees, animals, men, are all 
new. Instead of your sturdy New England oaks, 
or Southern pines, you have the feathery palm, or 
the banana with a leaf fifteen feet long by one 
and a half wide. You see men clad in a single 
garment that has never known the touch of scissors 
or needle. In fact it is one straight piece of cot- 
ton, that serves as head-dress, coat, jacket, and 
pants. Of course such a dress is liable to become 
disarranged, and, to see a man making his toilet 
about the head with .one hand and holding the 
dissolving windings of the lower part of his robe 
with the other hand as he runs through the streets, 
is decidedly amusing. The first step toward Beau 
Brummelism is to take a long strip of cloth, fold it 
across the middle, cut a hole through the folding 
for the head, then sew the sides together, except 
places for the arms, and the man is completely 
dressed. 

The principal mode of conveyance is by don- 
keys. And a most admirable mode it is. They 



234 Sights and Insights. 

are the most intelligent beings in Egypt. They 
tell you at the hotels, that if you wish to know any 
thing, never ask a driver of a carriage, but a don- 
key boy. He knows every thing. I inferred that 
this superior intelligence came from associating 
with the donkeys. This theory is proved by the fact 
that when these boys grow up and cease to asso- 
ciate with them, they fall to the ordinary low level 
of Egyptian stupidity. When you step out of your 
hotel, if you betray a moment's indecision in re- 
gard to your choice of an animal, you are instantly 
surrounded by twenty. Whether by the impulse 
of the boys or the original suggestion of the other 
animal I could never determine. Every nose is 
within twenty inches of yours, every ear within 
forty, and their bodies are compactly wedged in 
just behind the ears. You are compelled to come 
to a decision then, or remain a prisoner. But 
such is the entanglement, you never know whether 
you have mounted the one chosen or some other. 
Once mounted, however, you are sure of being 
carried gently and safely. The donkey enjoys a 
crowd. He chooses the densest part of it for his 
passage. Yes, he chooses, and your choice has 
nothing to do with his goings. Yet he never treads 
on a baby, runs down an old woman, or upsets a 
market basket. His delight is to go through a 



Egypt. 23 s 

bazaar, and mine to go with him. The crowd is 
a pack ; the street not over six feet wide ; people 
are pretending to trade on each side ; dogs and 
children are sleeping in the middle ; men are using 
it for a thoroughfare from one side of the city to 
the other ; all kinds of gay colored stuffs and 
wooden wares are suspended over the street, with- 
in hand reach of the walker, and head reach of 
the rider, and a camel with wide paniers, or sacks 
full of very hard stones, is frequently driven 
through with loud shouts for men to take care 
of themselves. 

Into this entanglement goes the donkey like the 
charge of the six hundred. You go with him and 
with a feeling quite akin to the chargers. You 
soon cease to exercise any surveillance over his 
movements, for you discover that it is all in vain, 
and you have enough to do to take care of your 
own. But out of all he brings you with such quiet 
persistence, that, in your admiration of him, you 
want to take him as your traveling companion for 
the rest of the journey. I have known men that 
weighed two hundred to become so enamored with 
the little beast as to say, on the occasion of any 
future ride, " Give me a mule." 

In one respect this is one of the most remark- 
able countries in the world. When it was the one 



2 36 Sights and Insights. 

kingdom of power in the whole world, when its art 
nourished most successfully, when its wisdom was 
sought by all the wise men, when it was rearing 
some of its most majestic monuments of power, 
then some obscure men in a little province it had 
held in subjection began to foretell, in the most 
minute manner, its future ruin. 

" Destruction cometh out of the North," said 
Jeremiah. " There is nothing north of us," Egypt 
might have answered. But both Nebuchadnezzar 
and Cambyses did come round by the north, and 
destroyed them. " Memphis shall be desolate and 
waste, without an inhabitant," he went on to say. 
And Isaiah added, " I will also destroy the idols, 
and cause the images to cease out of Memphis." 
True to the very letter. For while images abound 
in the ruined cities of Egypt, as Thebes and Kar- 
nak, there are none in Memphis. " The paper- 
reeds by the brooks shall wither, be driven away, 
and be no more." These had grown* for thousands 
of years. But at the word of prophecy they with- 
ered away. " The scepter of Egypt shall depart 
away," said Zachariah. Ezekiel added, "There 
shall be no more a prince in the land of Egypt." 
And for twenty-three centuries this word has been 
true. Persian, Macedonian, Greek, Roman, Arab, 
and, lastly, Turkish satraps have ruled the land, 



Egypt. 237 

but no prince of their own. Ezekiel declared, " It 
shall be the basest of kingdoms, neither shall it 
exalt itself any more above the nations : they shall 
no more rule over the nations." The most super- 
ficial observer must confess the word fulfilled. 
Living in mud dens, almost without clothes, loath- 
some with disease, deprived of the right to hold 
property, bowed down under the yoke of the mean- 
est nation that lives, cursed with polygamy, they 
fester out a miserable existence that may be truly 
called the basest. Old Egypt held powerful na- 
tions as slaves. New Egypt is itself a slave to the 
most contemptible of nations. The eye that sees 
the end from the beginning foresaw to what such 
beginnings must come. 

The railroads and canals that commerce has 
made over the land that lies in its path may mean 
something for the land of Egypt, but nothing for 
Egyptians. 

If there is any prophecy against me or my land, 
or any condition into which either may come, I 
am sure of its coming to pass, unless it be turned 
away, as Nineveh turned away that of Jonah. 



XXX. 

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF PALESTINE. 

fHAVE been to-day eleven hours in the sad- 
dle, on the roughest road in Palestine, on such 
an abominably slow walker, that I had to urge 
him into a trot by every possible means on every 
possible rod. My most prominent impression, 
therefore, is, that I have thighs, loins, etc., of 
which I was never so specially conscious before. 
I presume I shall not be anxious to sit much to- 
morrow. 

My first impression of Palestine came through 
a six-inch port-hole with the early morning light 
of yesterday. I was soon on deck. The sea was 
very rough, and the breakers on the outside rocks 
of Jaffa did not look inviting. Here began Jonah's 
rough time when he tried to flee from duty. It is 
easier to go to Nineveh than Tarshish any time. 
We were soon in boats, and riding the rough sea, 
toward an opening in the rocks not more than 
three times the width of our craft. Having cleared 
them, we saw the shore swarming with naked- 
legged Arabs, anxious to carry us ashore; but 



First Impressions of Palestine. 239 

after a ten minutes' battle with the boatman, con- 
ducted with vociferous demands for his money on 
one part, and a masterly inactivity on the other, 
we compelled him to land us upon the pier. Then 
bedlam broke loose. I have an impression that 
the people of Jaffa are the most ill-smelling on 
the face of the earth ; that if they would show a 
lithe of energy in any legitimate industry that they 
do to secure a few cents for carrying luggage, they 
would be the most prosperous people on the globe ; 
that the women are the most repulsive of their 
sex, (I was constantly grateful for the mercy to 
others that led them to vail their faces;) and that 
the children utter " backsheesh " with their first 
infant breath, pour out their expiring groan in 
those syllables, and utter the most of their breaths 
between with the same vocables. Jaffa makes 
much soap, but never uses any ; grows the finest 
oranges in the world, but eats mostly onions. 

The orange orchards about Jaffa are a revelation. 
I wandered in them a long time. The air was in- 
toxicating with the rare odor of myriads of blos- 
soms. A thousand brides might be crowned and 
covered with their entrancing beauty. Many 
branches trailed to the ground with burdens of 
ripe fruit. We were invited to pluck and eat all 
we wished. How I regretted having bought a 



240 Sights and Insights. 

dozen of the hugest kind (for six cents) before 
I came in. We brought away trophies ; one was 
fourteen and a half inches girth. 

We rode out three hours to Ramleh, and were 
charmed with the beauty of the plain of Sharon. 
A Jew named Netter declared his belief that the 
land was cursed for the laziness of the people, and 
that industry would make it blossom again like the 
garden of the Lord. He applied his doctrine ; 
and the blessings of royal harvests are waving in 
his field to-day as richly as in any part of the 
earth. 

I believe the present inhabitants of Palestine 
are the laziest people on the earth. They are 
mostly Arabs ; they lie round in the hot sun doing 
nothing, having nothing. A stone hut of one or 
two rooms, without floor, window, chair, furniture, 
or door, meets their ideas of a home ; and one or 
two masses of filthy rags constitute an ample 
wardrobe. There are many advantages in their 
style of dress ; their clothing never misfits ; it can 
be made to conform to any prevailing style with- 
out making over ; it is constrained by no laws of 
color. Catch an Arab maiden spending a whole 
day in matching shades ! A single garment of 
blue cotton is often her whole dress ; and lastly, 
it enables one to reach any part of his person 



First Impressions of Palestine. 241 

instantly to expel insectiverous intruders — a de- 
cided advantage, and one that I sadly miss. 

I have not seen a new garment in my whole two 
days ; I do not think they ever have any, except 
as the boy got a new knife by having a new blade 
put in, and then a handle added to the blade. 
They plow with a wooden stick that a man can 
swing with one hand, drawn by two little oxen 
somewhat bigger than cats. Their streets are so 
crooked that three of our party were inextricably 
lost in a town covering an acre, by being three 
rods behind. Rags, rottenness, smoke, and lazi- 
ness fill the life of the men ; hard work and wear- 
ing coins for ornaments, the women ; and crying 
"backsheesh," that of the children. I have seen 
as many as twenty coins, as large as a silver quar- 
ter of a dollar, hung to the vail of a woman en- 
gaged in such work as carrying manure ! I have 
seen one hundred and fifty dollars' worth of gold 
coin on the vail of a single woman whose whole 
wardrobe could not have been worth two dollars. 
Even the babies wear anklets, and have coins 
hung around their foreheads. Some of the don- 
keys wear brazen ornaments in their noses and 
ears — so they do in other parts of the world. 

The roads could not be worse. They never are 
improved by labor, but are full of loose and tight 



242 Sights and Insights. 

stones of all sizes, from that of an egg to that of 
a barrel. " Gather out the stones," has been 
obeyed only by the law of contraries. Even large 
towns like Gibeon have not a rod of decent road. 
The country is far more hilly and uneven than 
I expected ; there is hardly a level place large 
enough for a house or a grave from Lydda to Jeru- 
salem. The steep declivities of the hills touch, 
without intervening meadows ; and the summit of 
a hill is no sooner reached than you commence 
to descend the other side. Neither are the strata 
of these limestone hills inclined, as almost every- 
where else. The whole country was lifted up at 
once, and the original level preserved. Therefore 
the hills are naturally terraced, and look as if in- 
finite labor had been bestowed upon them. These 
limestone hills are sterile to an extent never 
dreamed of. They glare in the sun ; are destitute 
of tree, shrub, and often grass. God must have 
been good to the land in the olden time, or it 
would have been worse than the desert. Indeed, 
its present condition is illustrative of the curses 
pronounced upon it by Jeremiah. It could not be 
a fertile and pleasant land and the word of proph- 
ecy be true. We have ridden over thirty miles 
to-day, and, excepting a few acres about Gibeon, 
there is not an acre that any farmer amid the stony 



First Impressions of Palestine. 243 

hills of New Hampshire ought to take as a gift. 
The curse has withered it. There were but two 
places where a drop of water naturally came to the 
surface. One was just east of Bethhoron, where 
we stayed the most ravenous appetite that ever 
brought a sense of emptiness, and the other was 
the pool at Gibeon. The desolate aspect of the 
country is greatly increased by the ruins that every- 
where speak of a prosperity that has vanished, and 
a life that has turned to death. The only build- 
ings that are attempted to be kept in repair are the 
tombs of the contemptible grandees of this miser- 
able people. These are placed on every lofty 
summit of the hills. That is fitting. They have 
groveled long enough, and if there is any possi- 
bility of their having a part in the first resurrec- 
tion they will need a good start. 

Do not think I take a cerulean view of things ; 
I have not had the blues to-day. It has been a 
day of exhilaration and rapture ; for I have stood 
on famous sites of Bible scenes, and seen how the 
everlasting hills tell God's truth. I did not want 
to go from Egypt to Jerusalem direct — from Moses' 
birth to Christ's death at once ; so I turned up 
the mountains of Bethhoron to see, first of all, 
where Joshua got possession of the land by the 
defeat of the five kings in the lengthened day. I 



244 Sights and Insights. 

climbed up the valley where the confederate host 
came down pell-mell from the siege of Gibeon ; I 
saw where the Lord hindered and slew them with 
the storm of hail — where Joshua came upon them, 
and, in the long day of an unmoving sun, com- 
pleted the work. Soon after I came to Gibeon 
itself. It was the ecclesiastical capital of the 
theocracy for a long time. Here rested the taber- 
nacle till the completion of the temple ; here met 
Israel and Judah in exterminating warfare ; here 
was the duel of twenty-four men, in which every 
man was slain ; here Abner was defeated, and Da- 
vid secured his kingdom ; here Amasa was slain ; 
and here Solomon came up, as to a holy place, 
and prayed for that wisdom he needed to rule. 

A mile to the south is Mizpeh — a look-out. 
Westward we saw all the hills of Bethhoron, the 
plain of Sharon, the blue Mediterranean; east- 
ward, the mountains of Moab ; but most of all, to 
the south-east, the walls and domes of Jerusalem. 
As many historical incidents cluster around this 
place as about Gibeon. Here was held the 
council that resulted in the almost entire ex- 
termination of the tribe of Benjamin; here 
Samuel gathered his armies; and here Saul 
was elected king. The truth of the Bible is 
incidentally written all over these hills. The 



First Impressions of Palestine. 245 

truth of its predictions cannot be doubted, nor 
the severity of its denunciations despised by 
any man who moves along the lines of their 
development. 

Two hours later my horse's feet were clattering 
along the narrow, stony streets of Jerusalem ; and 
here I sit to send a greeting to friends far away. 
Before me is holy week in Jerusalem. Here are 
Gethsemane, Calvary, and the place of the Resur- 
rection ; and before me are the memorial days of 
the occurrence of events that have given these 
spots their world-wide interest. 

16 



XXXI. 

FAMILIAR PALESTINE. 

|HIS is the first country where I have felt at 
home. Yet I have been in no country that 
is so unlike my own. Somehow this seems as if I 
had lived here long ago in my half-forgotten 
youth, or possibly in some ante-natal condition, 
dimly remembered. As I try to clear away the 
mists, bring forward the distant, and make pres- 
ent what seems prehistoric, I find myself at my 
mother's side and my early childhood renewed. 
Now I see why this strange country seems so nat- 
ural. Its customs, sights, sounds, and localities 
were those I lived among in that early time, as 
shown to me by pictures, explained by word, and 
funded as a part of my undying property. 

The very first day, some experiences of which 
were sketched in my previous letter, was full of 
the most familiar scenes. 

There were no windows on the streets, no lamps 
to light them ; so that one would be in utter dark- 
ness if cast out from the wedding-feast. 

Every house-top is a haunt for all purposes. 



Familiar Palestine. 247 

We went on the one where Peter went up to pray, 
and where he got tidings of the blessed prospects 
for us Gentiles. All house-tops have battlements 
about them, as Moses commanded, lest men fall 
and their blood lie at the door of the owner. The 
stairs usually go up outside the house, yet inside 
the court, so that coming down to rush into the 
street one must go right by the door. Christ told 
his disciples that there would be such urgency in 
their flight that they must not go in to take any- 
thing out. There was a mill, with its upper and 
nether mill-stones, in the very first yard we went 
into. 

The ceaseless chattering of countless sparrows 
made it no wonder that five should be sold for two 
farthings. And yet our heavenly Father cared 
for each. How much more for men. 

Every-where men wrote with reeds, and not 
with pens. 

The Kadi and his court sat in the open air at 
the gate, as the judges in the time of Boaz. There 
sat Lot to receive the angels ; there Abraham 
bought Machpelah ; there Eli waited the news of 
the battle ; and there David went up to weep. 
No wonder gates symbolized strength ; and, con- 
sidering that all go in at them, that we hear of the 
gates of death and the open gates of the city of life. 



248 Sights and Insights. 

Outside the gates were the lepers, with finger- 
less hands, handless arms, noseless faces, eyeless 
sockets, voiceless throats, just a soul joined to a 
body of death. Covetousness must be an awful 
sin to be punished with such a terrible visitation. 

A few rods outside the gate stood a great syca- 
more tree, reaching out a strong level limb over 
the road for any Zaccheus that wanted to see Je- 
sus. Its strong, well-rooted, and far-braced bole 
presented a capital opportunity for any one to test 
his faith. 

Vailed women met us every-where. 

There was a plenty of praying in public places, 
whether to be seen of men, the All-seeing alone 
could discover. Repetitions were abundant, for a 
man stood saying over and over " Allah hu Ak- 
bar " more times than I cared to remain to count. 
I suppose they were vain, for the Arabs have a 
proverb in regard to these pretentiously pious 
people : " If your neighbor has been to Mecca 
once, watch him ; twice, avoid him ; if three times, 
move into the next street.' 5 Arabs who have been 
once are apt to be quite sharp enough for Ameri- 
cans who are old enough to have cut their wis- 
dom teeth. When they say " I never cheat," 
judge them by the rule of contraries. 

The plain of Sharon was gorgeous with flowers. 



Familiar Palestine. 249 

Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one 
of these. 

At night somebody hammered on our door half 
an hour, but "the door was shut." We had au- 
ricular proof that "without were dogs," plenty 
of them. 

We ceased to wonder that they should call on 
the people to make the paths straight, if they ex- 
pect to welcome their Lord. 

But I need not particularize. The whole scen- 
ery is appropriate, and all Bible description exact. 
In the southern part of Palestine vineyards abound. 
They have their hedge, tower, winefat, and are let 
out to husbandmen. Of the five parables and 
references to vineyards, three at least, and prob- 
ably five, were spoken in Southern Palestine. The 
allusion to the torrent that swept away the foolish 
man's house was spoken in Northern Palestine, 
where that thing is done even to this day. And a 
place that meets every requirement of the parable 
of the sower, namely, the wayside, stony ground, 
thorns, birds of the air, and good ground, can yet 
be seen from the Lake of Galilee. 

The Scripture is always correct. Samson goes 
down to Timnath, Joshua goes up from Ai, and 
down from Bethhoron. And we go down to Jericho 
to this day. The south wind blows from Arabia, 



250 Sights and Insights. 

and there is heat. The clouds come from the 
Mediterranean in the west, and there is rain. 
" God prepared an east wind, and the same beat on 
the head of Jonah, and he fainted." So did I 
nearly when a sirocco swept over the burning 
desert from the far east, and the thermometer 
stood at ninety-eight degrees in the coolest place 
we could find. 

God is careful to attest his word. He hath left 
all Palestine as one great comment on the Bible. 
He hath made the dumb earth to speak its truth ; 
every flower breathes incense to its praise. The 
chirp of twittering bird all over the earth, as well 
as angel-song at Bethlehem, declares its truth. 
Summer shower, evening wind, and beautiful rain- 
bows, attest that it is from God. Goethe said, The 
more we study the Bible the more we see to study. 
The Christian says, The more we love it the more 
we are drawn to love. We will take it, as Christ 
did, into our fierce battles ; and when the conflict 
thickens we grow weak, and the great enemy 
exults, we will hurl it at him. We shall find it a 
word of power. When we grow weary in life, and 
long for life that cannot weary, we will lay it be- 
neath our heads, and draw such life from the word 
as toil cannot weaken and death cannot touch. 



XXXII. 

A SHAM PENTECOST. 

| HE Greek Church is so super-apostolic that 

it is favored with a Pentecost every year. It 

needs it. One every month, such as I saw 

to-day, could not save or extend its power. The 

difficulty is that its Pentecost and descent of flame 

are only human — terribly human. 

On Thursday evening the host was carried into 
the Holy Sepulchre, and from that time thousands 
of pilgrims actually camped in the church, and 
left it not, day or night, for any purpose, that they 
might watch for the coming of the fire on Sat- 
urday noon. It is the occasion of the Greek 
Easter. 

On Friday night there was hardly room enough 
to step in the numerous cloisters, chapels, and con- 
geries of apartments that make up the Church of 
the Holy Sepulchre, so thickly were the bodies of 
the sleeping pilgrims disposed about the floors. It 
was perfectly still. They seemed like dead men, 
awaiting to rise with their Lord ; as if they were 
the ones whose graves had been opened, and were 



252 Sights and Insights. 

to go with him, after his resurrection, into the Holy 
City, and appear unto many. 

I went in again at eleven o'clock Saturday morn- 
ing. By the favor of the British Consul (for we 
have 'none here) I was assigned an admirable place 
for seeing. The Holy Sepulchre stands in a ro- 
tunda, ninety-nine feet in diameter, surrounded by 
eighteen -colossal piers, between which passages 
lead to innumerable rooms circling round the cen- 
tral rotunda. Two galleries, one above the other, 
are carried entirely around, giving room for spec- 
tators to stand between the enormous piers. To 
afford additional room for spectators, temporary 
galleries had been fitted up between the floor and 
the first gallery. My position was in the first gal- 
lery, nearly opposite the hole in the sepulchre 
whence the holy fire was to issue. 

The building was packed to its utmost limit. 
Men were perched in the most inaccessible 
places : standing on one foot in deep panels, cling- 
ing to hanging lamps, climbing up ladders, and 
sometimes standing on each other. A double line 
of Turkish soldiers on each side endeavored to 
keep open a passage round the sepulchre, through 
which the ecclesiastical dignitaries were to march. 
I say, endeavored ; but they could not always suc- 
ceed. A rush would often take place between two 



A Sham Pentecost. 253 

piers, and the line of soldiers would be crowded 
together in spite of themselves. Then the officers 
would belabor the crowd most unmercifully with 
large whips over the heads of the soldiers. I 
could often see that just out of reach of those 
terrible whips would be a dozen jovial fellows, 
crouched for vantage ground, and shoving lustily 
those who were within range of the lash. Then 
the officers would appear in the rear, and, clutching 
the real rascals from behind, pitch them out of the 
crowd without gloves. A stalwart Nubian seemed 
to have the most authority and strength. 

Next to the sepulchre was a solid mass of flesh. 
I never looked on rougher specimens of my kind, 
except some Bedouins near the Dead Sea. For 
clear, unadulterated devilishness, they will long 
carry the palm. But these were bad enough. 
Scarcely any one had on more clothing than 
drawers, shirt, and turban. Their sleeves were 
rolled up, or gone to the shoulder ; their arms 
were tattooed to the elbow ; in each right hand 
was firmly grasped a bunch of quarter-inch can- 
dles, tied together till from one to three inches in 
diameter, and firmly lashed to the wrist. Every 
arm was thrown up and spread over the shoulders 
of the crowd. Hardly a moment was free from 
some tumult. Some active rascal would suddenly 



254 Sights and Insights. 

clutch his front neighbor by the neck, and crowd 
by him ; then yells, threats, and blows resounded. 
They used to kill each other by scores, to be the 
first to get the issuing holy fire. They were sure 
to be among the highest saints if they only suc- 
ceeded. Now they sell the reception of the first 
fire to the highest bidder, and put a gang of prize- 
fighters around the hole to insure his getting what 
he pays for. This great boon has been sold for 
as much as one thousand two hundred and fifty 
dollars. I am happy to say the estimate of its 
value has depreciated, and this year seven hun- 
hundred and fifty dollars was the most money 
offered. Three men, who need to strike but 
once to finish a quarrel, stood round the holy 
hole to carry the first fire to the purchaser. 

They had handkerchiefs tied round their heads, 
except one whose hair was cropped to fighting 
trim. They gloried in their strength. None 
ventured to approach very near where these Go- 
liaths strutted. 

An hour after my arrival, forty-eight hours after 
the arrival of many, the Pacha arrived, and took 
his seat near where I stood. We expected the per- 
formance would soon take place ; for a few years 
ago, tired of waiting, he sent word to the ecclesias- 
tics that if the fire did not come from heaven soon, 



A Sham Pentecost. 255 

he would order his soldiers to make one on 
earth. It came directly. It did not come very- 
soon to-day. Every few moments some one 
would creep through the lines, and commence to 
race like mad round the sepulchre. They would 
be speedily stopped, and unceremoniously jammed 
back into the crowd. Years ago, before soldiers 
were introduced, they had free license to race 
round the sacred tomb. Many were trampled to 
death. They give up their old privileges unwill- 
ingly. Frequently nearly every person in the 
building seemed infected with a sudden disposition 
to yell, and they indulged themselves freely. 
Then a dozen bells would ring ; and anon the 
shrill ululations of a Moslem war-cry would pierce 
every part of the building. At length a proces- 
sion of priests, bishop, and the patriarch, gorgeous 
in silk and embroidery, filed into the reserved 
arena. They marched three times around the 
sepulchre to the music of their own chant, and the 
unrestrained yells of thousands of frenzied men in 
at least half a dozen different languages. Then 
came a pause, but not a quiet. The manifestation 
of God was about to appear. Formerly they let a 
dove loose to fly in the dome, and thus represent 
the descent of the Holy Ghost. It is discontinued 
now. But the excitement is hardly less intense. 



256 Sights and Insights. 

Had these men all suddenly gone mad, the excite- 
ment could not seem greater. 

The fire frequently delays to fall. Formerly 
they would pitch every Arab out of the building, 
to hasten its' coming. There were none present 
to-day. 

Soon a robed bishop stepped to the holy hole, 
put in both arms, and paused a moment, while 
some hearts stood still in expectation of the flam- 
ing symbol of God's presence, and others went 
wild with unutterable frenzy. Suddenly he brought 
forth a bundle of candles, with a flame six inches 
high, flaring like a torch, and delivered it to the di- 
abolical trinity beside him, who, locking one arm 
each about the other's necks, and holding the 
flame aloft with the other arms, started through the 
avenue of soldiers toward the waiting purchaser. 
Then the hell broke loose. Pandemonium yelled. 
The lines were forced together. Men leaped on 
each other, and thrust their candles toward the 
flame. The holders lashed it to and fro, that none 
might catch it, and pressed toward the purchaser. 
When they delivered it into his hand, there was 
not a single lighted taper in their surging wake. 
They had succeeded. Then the bishop took out 
another flame. One issued at the opposite side 
for the Armenians, and one from the western end 



A Sham Pentecost. 257 

for the poor Copts at the same time. Men and 
devils yelled ; reached a hundred naked arms to- 
ward the light ; every man that got it strove to 
prevent his neighbors from lighting from his flame ; 
many leaped on others having lights, and endeav- 
ored to wrench them away. Then we saw why 
they were lashed to the wrist. I expected to see 
every garment burst into flame. Some danced 
and swung their flaring torches, frequently striking 
others in the face. Many a long beard and uncut 
head of hair did take fire. Meanwhile, the flames 
spread. The smoke of thousands of torches, the 
suffocating smell of singed hair, rolled up and 
darkened the whole building, in which tho torches 
flared and flickered as if in a witches' dance. 
Every man sought to bathe himself in the flame. 
They opened their shirts, and thrust the torch in- 
to their bosoms ; waved it before their faces to 
breathe the fire. The crowd evidently thinned. 
Hundreds were crushed to death in 1834 by at- 
tempting to leave the church at once after the fire 
came. Skull caps of white cotton are sold by 
thousands to be used to put out the fire, and be 
put on the head of the pilgrim after death. Men 
now extinguished their fires in these caps, turbans, 
shirts, and handkerchiefs. But frequently some 
newcomer would make a wide circle where he 



258 Sights and Insights. 

swung his flaring flame, or some one destitute of a 
torch would create a decided scene by striving to 
wring one from its legitimate possessor. 

I came out and watched the mass of humanity (?) 
issuing from the portal. They looked haggard. 
Many had lost turbans and head-gear in the fight. 
Many were singed. Many were blowing red blis- 
ters, disproving the doctrine that the fire is harm- 
less. Perhaps it is only so to saints. If so, I won- 
der the whole multitude was not consumed. Every 
one bore his bunch of candles. Most had the 
cloth to which the holy fire imparted its sanctity 
when extinguished. These candles, cloths, and 
pilgrims, will scatter to the far parts of Northern 
Russia, and away to the East to-morrow. What 
can God do with such material ? A sweet picture 
rises to rebuke me for that question. I saw a 
school of sweet-faced children the other day as 
interesting as those that dot our New England 
hills. And I was told that those children were 
raked as jewels out of these foul sewers of Jeru- 
salem. They were a part of this human vermin 
put into better circumstances. And I ought rather 
to ask, What will we do for these, our fellows ? 

To the honor of the Greek Church be it said 
that one man declined the patriarchate of Jerusa- 
lem because he would not take part in what he 



A Sham Pentecost. 259 

knew to be a fraud. And the present Patriarch 
rendered himself unpopular by honestly declaring 
that the fire had an earthly origin. But what 
Irishman would go to Donnybrook Fair if there 
was to be no play with shillalahs? What Digger 
Indian would go to a pow-wow and war dance if 
there was no captive to be tortured ? And what 
Greek pilgrim would come from Siberia, or Copt 
from Central Africa, if there is to be no Pentecost 
at Jerusalem; no candle that has been touched 
by holy fire in his dwelling after his return; and 
no memory that he has been near God to bless him 
through all his after-life ? 



XXXIII. 

GROPINGS UNDER JERUSALEM. 

iHE tendency of cities is to bury themselves. 

The ground around Notre Dame, in Paris, 

has risen eleven feet in seven hundred years. 

The pavement on which the people stood to hear 

Cicero scarify Cataline was discovered twelve feet 

under the surface of the cow-pasture which took 

its place. The magnificent foundations of the gate, 

through which the great Panathenaic processions 

swept to the Parthenon at Athens, have just been 

uncovered by removing twenty feet of earth. We 

were able to see the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, 

where the people yelled for two hours, only by 

removing about thirty feet of soil. And the 

twenty sieges, seventeen captures, and two utter 

annihilations of Jerusalem, have heaped the debris 

of its ruins in some places to the depth of one 

hundred feet. Some houses have three ranges of 

ruins under them. 

The tendency of the explorer is to disinter. He 
likes to go to the bottom of things, and I confess 
I share his feelings. The whole rocky region 



Gropings Under yerusalem. 261 

about Jerusalem has been fairly honey-combed. 
The precipitous sides of the ravines all gape with 
old tombs — some single, many of complicated 
construction, and connected with chambers, 
vaults, passages, story above story, and range 
behind range. 

But the city itself is the chief object of interest. 
The location of the holy sites has given rise to 
battles as long and fierce, if not as bloody, as those 
for the possession of the city itself. It seems to 
me that God has designedly hidden these from 
identification. And when I see the blind idolatry 
of those places, that the least sense can see are 
not the real ones, I am not surprised. 

But we are lingering above ground, and resist- 
ing the fascination below. Just east of the 
Damascus gate on the north side of the city, 
where the whole rocky area has been greatly cut 
down, we pass under the walls, light our candles, 
scramble down over a heap of rubbish through a 
three-foot passage, and come into vast excavations 
directly under the city. Here we wandered hour 
after hour, constantly descending toward the south- 
east. These excavations are immense. In some 
places there were great heaps of small chips, as if 
ten thousand perch of stone had been dressed at 

that spot. Sometimes we came to vast irregular 
~* 17 



262 Sights and Insights. 

pillars, left to support the roof. Sometimes that 
support had been insufficient, and a thousand tons 
of rock had fallen from roof to floor. If the proc- 
ess had been repeated while we were under we 
should have needed no other burial. We came to 
a place where a man, who had wandered long in 
these vast caves, had lain down and died. Doubt- 
less his lights had all burned out, and left him in 
this utter blackness to wander hopelessly till his 
starved body refused to move, and he lay down 
to wait alone for death. It is a good place to lose 
one's self. The lights of your fellows disappear 
behind columns, or in distant recesses. And when 
you shout to them, or they to you, the multitudi- 
nous echoes prevent your knowing whence the 
voice proceeds. Even our guide lost his way in 
trying to come out, and we had an opportunity to 
speculate on how long our diminishing candles 
would last. We could see where the workmen 
placed their smoky lamps on the wall, where they 
had partially excavated behind slabs of rock which 
they did not finally detach; we saw blocks that 
were not finished, the marks of the tools as plain 
as when first made. 

In one place some water trickled down through 
the limestone, and left its usual depositions of pure 
white. Who excavated these vast chambers, and 



Gropings Under Jerusalem. 263 

for what purpose ? Evidently for the purpose of 
obtaining building-stone. And probably it was 
done by Solomon to obtain stones for the temple, 
and his other vast works. Here they were torn 
from their beds, broken, cut, shaped, and polished 
in the dark, and then lifted up into the light, never 
to feel hammer-stroke any more, but to be set in 
their designed place in the temple, amid the 
shoutings of " Grace, grace ! " So it is with us, 
the living stones. 

When Solomon received the exact pattern and 
dimensions for the temple on Mount Moriah, he 
found that the temple was much larger than the 
area of the mountain top. What was to be done ? 
" Reduce the building to the size of the ground," 
Worldly Wiseman might say. "Not a digit," said 
the then obedient Solomon ; " build the mountain of 
the Lord's house large enough to receive the house 
itself." It was done, and immense substructures 
rose from the sloping sides to the level of the 
mountain. We went down into the complicated 
series of arches and pillars that have been placed 
between these walls and the mountain to support 
the floor above. And though they have been re- 
constructed out of the old material, we got a vivid 
idea of the extent of the vast works that Solomon 
accomplished. 



264 Sights and Insights. 

To go down into the lowest series of subterra- 
nean works that has been discovered was a task 
of greater difficulty. Several guides professed to 
be able to lead thither, but did not. The authori- 
ties would gladly bury all knowledge of these dis- 
coveries. The very last day of my tarrying in Je- 
rusalem had come, and I feared I might not ac- 
complish my wish. But one of Captain Warren's 
assistants came to my aid. I expected the place 
would not be particularly sweet, dry, roomy, or 
pleasant ; and as I crept along on hands and 
toes, with the mud oozing up between my fingers, 
and the fragrance of these sub-sewers in my nos- 
trils, I realized my expectations. 

But who could traverse works whose stones were 
laid under the supervision of Solomon, by the 
workmen of King Hiram of Tyre, and still bearing 
the Phoenician marks, and not be thrilled with the 
greatest interest ! Here doubt vanishes, and the 
doings of the great king of Jerusalem stand con- 
fessed. The only drawback to the pleasure of 
the day was the consciousness that these explora- 
tions had come to an end — that numberless cisterns, 
tanks, and passages remained unexplored, and 
questions of the highest interest unsolved. But 
ignorance and superstition cannot always reign. 
Some time not very far distant, I believe, permis- 






Gropings under Jerusalem. 265 

sion will be obtained, and, since they would not 
now be worshiped by the finders, the sacred sites 
of the temple, the altar, the holy of holies, and the 
place of the crucifixion, will be conclusively iden- 
tified. 



XXXIV. 

HOW WE GET ABOUT THE HOLY LAND. 

"\V^7"E get about just as our fathers, the patri- 
J^Qt archs, did. Like Abraham, we come 
from a far country, and have servants and horses 
and camels and asses. Like Jacob, we are plain 
men dwelling in tents. Like David, we are stran- 
gers and sojourners, as were all our fathers ; our 
days are as a shadow, and there is no abiding. 

When it is known that there is a party at the 
Damascus or Mediterranean hotel at Jerusalem 
about to make a tour in the country, every drag- 
oman prepares to call upon them in state. They 
send up their cards. They come themselves, 
brown, yellow, and black — in wide trousers, and 
turbans green, blue, red, and white. Find- 
ing there is no lack in quantity, you begin to in- 
quire about quality, and find from their innumer- 
able testimonials, many of them manufactured and 
spurious, that each one is the best in Syria. Some 
of them speak as many as ten languages, but can 
neither read nor write one. 

Being Americans, we selected a Nubian named 



How We Get About the Holy Land. 267 

Eunice, black as a coal, with regular African feat- 
ures and heels, who declared, after seeing our 
white skins at the Dead Sea, that he was born 
white as any of us, but had got somewhat tanned. 
He could both read and write. 

This dragoman provided us with three large 
double tents, one for stores and two for us, the 
men sleeping out doors among the horses; nine 
men, and fourteen horses and mules. What an 
army for five unostentatious Methodist preachers. 
Besides these there was always a guard hired from 
a neighboring post at night, and sometimes an es- 
cort by day. This guard always endeavored to 
seem to earn their money by an incessant chal- 
lenging of real or imaginary foes, and discharging 
their fire-arms every few minutes throughout the 
entire night. This immense train and guard 
seemed unnecessary to us, but the dragoman, hav- 
ing contracted to take us on our journey safely, 
was at liberty to engage as large an army as he 
thought best. 

That contract was something truly formidable. 
It took all the legal talent of the party to draw it up. 
It was strong enough for a hundred thousand dol- 
lar job at least. It was witnessed before the consul. 
I take it out of my relics, and look over its En- 
glish script, which the dragoman could not under- 



268 Sights and Insights. 

stand, and its supposed Arabic, which we could 
not understand, with no little interest. Neverthe- 
less it stood us in good stead. When disputes 
arose, and rebellions were imminent, we pointed 
to clauses strong enough to beggar, draw and 
quarter our poor dragoman on our arrival at the 
end of our journey, and every time that contract 
won the day. We might have kept him till this 
time with it. Indeed, so enamored did he be- 
come with us, he begged to be taken to America. 
But for fear of breaking the hearts of his two 
wives in Cairo, we insisted on his return. 

The roads over which Joseph sent wagons, and on 
which the Canaanites, King Jabin, the Philistines, 
and old Romans drove their chariots, have all dis- 
appeared. It is a rare thing to find a rod of Ro- 
man road. Only one road now exists, and that 
has just been finished from Beirut to Damascus. 
And even there, the natives drive their camels 
and other beasts of burden along unworked mount- 
ain-paths beside that perfect road rather than pay 
a trifling toll for its use. 

But how do we get about? Suppose we live 
over a specimen day. Five o'clock finds us turn- 
ing out of our camp-beds, cooling our hundreds 
of volcanoes with welcome water, inspecting every 
article of clothing with care, and finding, perhaps, 



How We Get About the Holy Land. 269 

before the toilet is completed, that some flea has 
escaped notice, and is devoting all his venomous 
energies to raising more volcanoes. 

Then we step out of the tent-door, and Mount 
Ebal faces us. Behind is Gerizim, and between, 
the beautiful valley of springs. Breakfast consists, 
as usual, of eggs, boiled, raw, or omeletted, two 
courses of meat, bread, butter, coffee, oranges, and 
nuts. Then to horse. Then follows a series of 
denunciations of the " master of horse " and his 
miserable string contrivances, Of which he under- 
stands not a word, and we learn to depend on our- 
selves. The usual crowd oi* lepers stands round 
for alms. We give to their chief for the general 
good, and are glad to leave them behind. We 
ride an hour through olive groves, and an hour 
after approach ancient Samaria. I thought I had 
prepared for the journey, and could meet no sur- 
prises. But the beauty of the situation, the extraor- 
dinary magnificence of its former architectural 
splendor as shown in present ruins, astonished me. 
For a half a mile huge columns protrude from the 
accumulated earth, in the midst of wheat fields 
and olive orchards, showing what was once a 
stately colonnade leading to a magnificent temple 
on the summit. But Samaria sinned, and the word 
of prophecy proclaimed that it should fall ; and 



270 Sights and Insights. 

all the art and power of man is as weakness before 
one of God's words. 

Then we climbed steep hills for hours; met 
dozens of women bringing down great bundles of 
thorny brush for fire-wood. I do not wonder that 
they are willing to go, as they sometimes do, four 
miles, and climb a high mountain, as we found 
them on Tabor, to get the means of making a 
sweeter smelling fire than the dried manure, with 
which so many villages scent the air for miles. 

The noon-day lunch, consisting of cold chicken, 
mutton, eggs, sardines, bread of the country, some- 
times in loaves and "sometimes rolled thin as a 
napkin, and as large, is eaten under some fig or 
olive tree, when such can be found, by men who 
know what hunger is. A few oranges and dates 
give a touch of elegance to a repast that otherwise 
would have been more substantial eating. 

Reaching the summit of the hills, we cried, 
" Thalatta, thalatta! " as eagerly as did Xenophon's 
ten thousand Greeks, for at the west was the blue 
Mediterranean. Between us and it nestled Do- 
than, on the hill that Elijah saw full of chariots 
and horsemen. Carmel lay at the north-west. 
The great battle-plain of Esdraelon spread at our 
feet ; in it were Jezreel and Nain, and beyond it the 
hills of Nazareth. Just at the right of them rose 



How We Get About the Holy Land. 271 

the rounded form of Tabor, at the north-west lay 
the sea of Galilee, and beyond it Herman lifted 
its snowy crest. At the east lay, near at hand, 
the hills of Gilboa, and beyond, the mountains of 
Moab. How we lingered over the prospect! O 
these visions of the land of promise ! They rise in 
long delightful lines, and sweep by like pano- 
ramas. There are pictures of green set in rocky 
border, fertility contrasted with sterility, strange 
trees covered with gorgeous flowers, places dear 
to us as home, and all embosomed in pellucid air. 
Yes, dear to us as home ; for they are associated 
with the home of the soul, its rest, peace, and the 
beginning of its best life. By five o'clock in 
the afternoon we had finished our wanderings 
among the hills, and came down to our camp at 
Jenin. 

Here we had dinner. That was always an event. 
It consisted of no less than five or six courses, of 
which the breakfast and ample lunch were only a 
hint, a foretokening. 

Thus day by day we traversed scenes of most 
absorbing interest. One by one, words ceased to 
represent a dim airy imagining and came to 
represent a living reality. God's great judgments 
are scored into the eternal rocks of these hills, 
branded deep into the seared valleys, and written 



272 Sights and Insights. 

on a hundred ruined cities and towns. Already 
the wearinesses, discomforts, fatigues, and dis- 
gusts have retired by a law of our nature into the 
dim background, and are recalled only by an ef- 
fort ; while the moral victories of our race, the 
places where they were won, and the visions of 
Jesus walking like a reservoir of life amid our dy- 
ing humanity, grow clearer and more beautiful 
day by day. 



XXXV. 

PI LGRIMS. 

"TnATHEN the sun of Africa reaches the limit 
y^VY of its southing, and begins to come back 
toward the equator and the north, there 
is a stir in the breasts of those far-off men to 
go to Jerusalem. They float down the Nile, they 
take caravans and cross the deserts from Abys- 
sinia, or the steamers and cross the sea, but they 
must come to the Holy City. The same feeling 
stirs Arabia and the far East. It quivers through 
Europe. Frozen Russia is warmed by the same 
impulse, and from a thousand converging lines 
men draw near the holy place. Easter week finds 
thousands gathered at Jerusalem who have never 
been there before, nor ever expect to be again, for 
once going is thought to be enough for a life-time. 
It would seem as if the Jews' habit of " going 
up to Jerusalem " had inoculated the race and 
become universal. To this city the Magi came 
from far-off Persia. To this city the heart of 
Europe turned through the Middle Ages in pil- 
grimages of thousands upon thousands. They 



274 Sights and Insights. 

went singly and in companies, begging in their 
poverty, or spending their wealth ; went when the 
difficulties and dangers were so great that, of a 
company of seven thousand, only two thousand 
could be expected to return. Then they went 
armed, and the Crusades were inaugurated, which 
were only pilgrimages under arms. And now the 
only signs of enterprise about the city are exhibited 
in those vast establishments that have been erected 
to take care of the pilgrims that once a year make 
the desolate streets of Jerusalem thronged as at a 
Passover. It is the holy city of the Jew, who would 
be glad to buy the right to own and rule it at any 
price. It is a holy city of the Moslem, who would 
not sell or yield it on any condition. It does seem 
as if the great sacrifice of Christ for man's good 
had enshrined this place in the warmest affections 
of the human heart. What a pity that this great 
annual gathering could not be made to conduce 
to union, and not to scorn — a kind of universal 
Evangelical Alliance. Who shall say man has not 
a deeply religious nature ? 

It is fortunate that the Greek and Latin Easters 
do not occur on the same week. As it is, the 
Latins can crucify their wooden image, take it 
down from the cross, anoint it on the stone of unc- 
tion, put it in the tomb, and perform all other 



Pilgrims. 275 

spectacular pageants one week, and leave the place 
for the Greeks to hold their powwows the next. 
It is fortunate that the Moslems have holy places 
different from the Christians. They go to the 
pretended tomb of Moses, on this side Jordan, 
for purposes similar to those which bring Christians 
to the supposed tomb of Christ. Either by provi- 
dential foresight, or by remarkable coincidence, 
the pilgrimage takes place at the Greek Easter. 
It is escorted out of St. Stephen's Gate at the east 
of the city by all the military power of the Gov- 
ernor, and with as much eclat as possible. If, as 
the Moslems constantly fear, a pilgrimage of the 
Christians should at any time become a crusade 
for the capture of Jerusalem, there would be a 
force of fanatics at hand to defend the city. 

These pilgrims are a study. They are of all 
ages and conditions. The old gray-haired sire, 
who has been deprived of this priceless opportu- 
nity through a long life, finding his opportunity 
at last, gathers up his staff, and, uncertain whether 
he shall ever return, sets out on his long-deferred 
quest. The mother takes her little babe in her 
arms that she may dip it beneath the sacred Jor- 
dan, or let it breathe the holy fire that cleanses 
away its stains. Young married couples often 
take the pilgrimage for a wedding journey. At 



2j6 Sights and Insights. 

the time of their coming and going every steam- 
er swarms with them, as the Egyptians did with 
something else during the third plague. Under 
and upper-deck, the top of the caboose, the in- 
side of every boat and the grating on which it 
rests, quarter-deck, and forecastle, are covered 
so thickly that they scarcely attempt to move 
at all. There they sit by day, there they recline 
at night, and there they take their meals. Who- 
ever tries to get about the deck steps between 
the feet of a toothless old crone, strides over 
a curled-up heap of rags, crowds through a doz- 
en who have got on their feet, trips here, and 
stumbles there, catching himself by a rope, or 
falling into the general wriggling mass, conscious 
all the while that the ship no more swarms 
with them than they swarm with fleas and other 
equally detestable vermin. Six hundred were 
thus stowed away and piled up on board our 
little Austrian Lloyd. It was so crowded that 
it could only give us two beds for five persons. 

When I heard that seventeen, who tried to take 
the boat at Jaffa, had been dashed on the rocks 
by the surf and drowned, my feelings were touched. 
Yes, I felt — that there was so much more room on 
board. 

I shall never forget one large old Greek woman, 



A Pilgrimage. 277 

who had been smuggled into the cabin by her well- 
to-do son. She sat opposite us, and next to a 
young exquisite. She weighed two hundred and 
fifty pounds, and ate accordingly. She would 
look up to her elegant neighbor with a smile like 
a dimple in a platter of jelly, and take any thing 
off his plate without so much as saying, " By your 
leave." He tried to be polite, and we tried to be 
decently sober ; neither succeeded. But she never 
took the hint. She took the provisions instead. 
While we were laughing, we found to our horror 
that the plate of figs that was to serve for a dessert 
after the courses, was being rapidly emptied be- 
fore the time. One of our party removed it be- 
yond her reach. She did not take the hint, but 
took a fork and went for it. Then the plate 
went beyond the range of any of her supplemented 
capabilities ; she looked surprised, but I do not 
think she ever understood the meaning of the 
movement. She ate with her fingers, and licked 
them clean as complacently as a kitten does its 
paws. I could not see that her pilgrimage had 
done her much good, for she clandestinely stole 
what she had a perfect right to take. But possi- 
bly there was so much of her that it would take 
five or six pilgrimages to pickle her clear through. 

I got on such intimate terms with one old pil- 

18 



278 Sights and Insights. 

grim at Jerusalem that I obtained his picture. He 
is a type of a class. Many are obliged to obtain 
by charity the means of support. They sit for 
hours motionless in the hot sun on the burned 
earth. The hair sometimes grows all over their 
exposed backs and breasts, completely hiding the 
skin from sight. It occurred to me that in the 
rarity of Christian, or heathen, charity they 
were obliged to eat greens, as Nebuchadnezzar 
did, and their pin feathers were beginning to 
sprout. 




974i 



The Old Pilgrim. 



XXXVI. 

HUMAN NATURE. 

fT is a great thing. We were going this' morn- 
ing to see the place when the vast empire of 
a single man held more unclean spirits than 
two thousand swine could carry. But we have 
found a vaster possession here. There is our Jew 
guide, Moses, besides all the concentrated contrari- 
ness of his race, besides absorbing all the obstinacy 
of the region, so that our very mules are meek, 
and Marmoud, master of horse, is amiable — has be- 
come suddenly possessed with I know not how 
many stubborn devils of disobedience, and we 
cannot cast them out. They are the kind that go 
not out except by prayer and fasting. Moses 
wont do either, and we have no spirit for the first 
nor time for the second. Our tents were all 
struck, and we ready for the saddle, when the spirits 
seized him, and he declared he would not go a 
step. They were the pious kind of devils. He 
declared that, since it was Saturday, his religion 
forbade to include the distance from Nazareth, via 



282 Sights and Insights. 

Tabor, to Tiberias in a Sabbath-day's journey. 
He declared that all the money in Palestine could 
not induce him to violate his conscience ; and 
when our Sheik's cane was flourishing about his 
ears, confessed himself " an old Jew," and ready 
to die for his religion. 

I never understood before why some tribes are 
accustomed to beat those whom they suppose to 
be possessed of devils. I confess it then seemed 
the most natural thing to do. But we turned him 
over to " the government man " to compel him to 
fulfill his contract, and an hour after all the 
obstinacy returned to our mules and Marmoud, 
and we Gentiles were following a meek Moses 
toward Tabor and out of Canaan. 

I made another discovery in this vast domain 
recently. I saw some little children making up 
all sorts of contemptuous faces at our party, in- 
cluding the venerable Sheik, Brother Elliot. I 
could not understand it. I first supposed the 
pitiable things had the St. Vitus' Dance. But hav- 
ing been spit at and hit with their spiteful little 
fists a few times I began to take the hint. It 
dawned on me that we were objects of scorn and 
spitting to those vermin that swarmed about us. 
It was an astonishment. I had supposed that we 
were Christian gentlemen, and citizens of the uni- 



Human Nature. 283 

versal Yankee nation; but we were nothing but 
"Christian dogs." I think that if anew crusade 
to exterminate the holders of the Holy Sepulchre 
had been preached then and there, five enlistments 
would have been made on the spot. 

Afterward I thought it out. These Arabs are a 
free, wild race. They have ruled very widely. 
They had but to rally to the cry " There is no God 
but God," etc., and they swept three continents. 
I am amazed when I remember how widely this 
little peninsula of Arabia once ruled. East as far 
as India ; south and west, to the heart of Africa 
and the Atlantic. They overran the south of 
Europe for a century, and they believe that the 
crescent became decrescent only after being full, 
and, in obedience to infinite fate, will soon begin 
to fill again. I do not wonder at their pride. 

What have they known of the people they de- 
spise ? They have abused the Jews, and hence 
despised them. How could they help doing the 
first,' or last ? The Jews claimed the city that 
was holy in the eyes of the Moslems. Unable to 
conquer it, they were willing to pay any price for the 
privilege of crawling in its dust and kissing its 
stones. It would not be in human nature, espe- 
cially Arab, to refuse, and to make the price ex- 
orbitant. Again, the Jews who resort to Jerusa- 



284 Sights and Insights. 

lem are the greatest temptation toward despising 
a brother, a man ever encountered. Many of them 
are the broken-down sinners of the race, from ail 
countries, going back to spend the wretched rem- 
nant of their lives in expiation. I shared the 
Arab feeling toward them, till I remembered I had 
a better teaching and a diviner example. 

Then the Arabs have had some dealings with 
my brother Christians. They have been swarming 
to Jerusalem for six centuries as purposeless pil- 
grims, dirty and beggarly ; or, as soldiers, to wrest 
from them their acquired or rightful possessions. 
The Arabs carried the palm in fighting, the cru- 
saders in lying and truce-breaking. 

The Christians have also dwelt in their midst 
for a time sufficient to enable a moderately quick- 
witted Arab to judge of their excellence. They 
are in Jerusalem and in Bethlehem as two hostile 
and rival sects, ready to fly at each other's throats 
for the least advantage over each other, or to com- 
bine for the least advantage over the Arab. A 
few days before I was in Bethlehem the Latin and 
Greek monks fought each other in the Church of 
the Nativity. A few days after they combined and 
fought the authorities, strewing the Church with 
the torn-down finery, smashed lamps, and fourteen 
dead bodies. The Turks know that the pretext 



Human Nature. 285 

of the Czar for attacking Turkey in the Crimean 
war arose out of a contest about which sect should 
repair the dome of the Church of the Holy Sep- 
ulchre. The Arab sees Christians as two hostile 
sects, between which he stands to keep them from 
devouring each other. 

When I looked down on the Turkish soldiers 
preserving order at the pretended descent of the 
Holy Fire, keeping them from enacting the crushes 
and slaughters of former years, I said, You have a 
right to despise such hideous mockeries, cheats, 
and the people that do them. Children of He- 
bron, you may spit at me, my race deserves 
it; and I wont enlist in a crusade for your 
annihilation. 

How we shall eradicate this contempt that has 
been bred in the bone, taught by history, and 
strengthened by experience, and get them to ac- 
cept us as their teachers and leaders, I do not 
exactly see. Perhaps the English method of 
sending physicians and teachers among them, who 
shall freely cure their bodies and enlighten their 
minds, is after all the quickest way. 

When I went out of the streets of Jerusalem, 
from among the dirty, sore-eyed, ragged, ignorant 
children, who despised us " Christian dogs," into 
the schools of Bishop Gobat, and saw the bright- 



286 Sights and Insights. 

faced, clear-eyed, well-dressed children, I could 
but ask, " Are these the children of the favored and 
rich citizens ? " " O no, they are jewels picked out 
of the mire of the streets." The first thing Chris- 
tianity does for them is the same that Jesus did 
for the blind man. It says, " Go, wash." The 
next thing, naturally, is the same that came to 
the demoniac. He was found "clothed." I trust 
that all else may follow : that, whereas they have 
been blind, they may see, and be in their right 
minds. These schools in Jerusalem, Nablous, and 
Nazareth, are the most promising features of what 
our Sheik was wont to call a "God-forsaken 
country." May they soon bring God back into 
the land where his brightest glories have been 
shown ! 

Another aspect of this kaleidoscopic human 
nature flashed on me in Cairo. I went to see the 
howling dervishes. Now, it is a fitting thing to 
bow before God, and to call upon his name. 
These men bow till their long hair sweeps the 
pavement, then throw themselves erect with such 
force, that their hair ends fly eighteen inches 
above their heads. At the same time they shout 
" Allah " in concert, and with such vehemence of 
utterance that the din is something terrific. Think 
of thirty men in a half circle going through this 



Human Nature. 287 

exercise with the utmost rapidity, in perfect time, 
and under a master of ceremonies, who regulates 
it all. Occasionally he beckons a particularly 
zealous person to come inside, who extends his 
arms horizontally, and whirls round so rapidly 
that his hair stands out in a straight line parallel 
to his arms. This exercise continued for half an 
hour. Perspiration poured off the actors in 
streams. Occasionally one would become insane, 
and his movements spasmodic. He was then 
thrown upon the floor by the men appointed to 
care for such. His breathing was fearfully ster- 
torous, and his violent movements threatened to 
dash his brains out on the pavement. One man 
sat on his chest to moderate his breathing, and 
another held his head. Not in the least was the 
violent motion of the performers decreased, or 
their resonant shout lessened. Indeed, I think 
each one desired to come into that condition as a 
kind of ecstasy. Of all hideous worship, short of 
burning human sacrifices, the worst I have seen 
is that of the howling dervishes. I think they 
ought to be designated by the omission of the r 
and the last three letters of their name and the 
addition of an 1. 

Coming out from this den, I saw a more pleas- 
ing specimen of human nature. It was a runner 



288 Sights and Insights. 

before a royal carriage. He was dressed in a pure 
white robe of ample dimensions. He was san- 
daled with red, and his legs bare to the knee. In 
his hand he carried a light wand, and his business 
was to give warning in the busy street of the 
swift coming of the carriage. How lightly he ran. 
How vigorously and cheerily he cried. He never 
seemed to want for breath, to put his foot down 
heavily, or take it up wearily. He was a perfect 
human gazelle. I knew what the singer in the 
Canticles meant when she said her beloved was 
like a roe, leaping upon the mountains, and skip- 
ping upon the hills. 

There is a great deal of human nature in Euro- 
pean people, and they are not afraid to show it. 
We were approaching Vienna in the cars. There 
was a young man in our compartment who was 
suffering an ecstasy of agony from a cinder in 
his eye. A man six feet from him told him to 
pull the upper lid far down over the lower, hold 
it there a minute, and he would find relief. He 
did so, opened his eye, and felt no pain. He 
turned to his informant and said, " I thank you." 
Then he gave a couple of winks, looked out of 
the window to try his eye, and was so much re- 
lieved that he waved his hand to his friend in need, 
and said, " A hundred thanks ! " 



Human Nature. 289 

He soon discovered that he had not done justice 
to the subject. He was wholly cured. His face 
grew radiant as he left his seat, seized the kind 
stranger round the neck, kissed him on both 
cheeks, and said, " Ten thousand thanks ! you 
have cured me." 

Since that time I have told many American 
people, both gentlemen and ladies, how to get 
cinders out of their eyes, but they have never 
thanked me in that way. 

Strangers often commence an acquaintance by 
showing you a hotel bill, in which is put down 
every glass of lager, and other less important pro- 
visions, for the purpose of warning you against a 
hotel where they charge a groschen too much. An 
American at home would scorn to call all the men 
in the office to join in a protest against what he 
deems an exorbitant charge. He would not have 
it presumed that he could not pay any charge the 
landlord could make. He thrusts his hand deep 
into his pocket, pays the bill, and says to himself, 
" I'll never go to that hotel again," and goes 
there the next time he visits the place. 

The worship of the almighty dollar is a char- 
acteristic of universal human nature. In Eu- 
rope, however, it is not fully developed; they 
worship centimes, kreutzers, pfennings, and such 



290 Sights and Insights. 

infinitesimal fractions of a cent. I once bought 
some cherries in the street for a third of a cent. 
Turning them out, I discovered that all the good 
ones had been put on top. I paid three kreutzers 
for some nice strawberries one day, and my seat- 
mate, seeing how nice they were, paid ten times 
as much for a basket full of them ; but, having 
taken off the first layer, found that they were like 
the fig-tree in the Scriptures, nothing but leaves. 
As the train moved right off, he had only a bur- 
dock basket and the laugh of the passengers for 
his money. I had the same trick played on me 
months afterward by a girl, whose sweet face be- 
guiled me from all thought that she could cheat. 

I wrote the heading of this chapter, " Men which 
I have met," in imitation of an article I once saw 
entitled " Dogs whom I have met." But I have 
grown into a more genial mood as my pen has run 
along these later pages. I believe a fair propor- 
tion of human nature is a keen sense of the ludi- 
crous, and it is by no means so small a proportion 
as Mr. Gradgrind imagined. I beg pardon, Mr. 
Gradgrind never imagined any thing. I have long 
since forgiven Moses and the sunny-faced girl on 
the Wengern Alp, and would be willing to give 
them an opportunity to try it again. 




XXXVII. 

OUR LAST RIDE IN SYRIA. 

TRAIGHT into the gorge of the Barada 
(Abana), to the west of Damascus, runs the 
excellent road to Beirut. We could not 
tolerate such an impertinence as a road in Syria, 
and so we struck a trail into the desolate mount- 
ains further north. Desolate is no word for them. 
As you look over their stiffened billows, they seem 
never to have been kissed by the sunshine into 
blushes of flowers, but scorched, blistered, and 
blighted by its fire. There is not a gleam of 
greenness in their wide miles. The dull, reddish 
brown gives no place to those signs of life that 
spring vigorously where the retreating glacier 
only yesterday removed its cold foot, or to that 
hardier class of plants that assert their right to 
live on granite peaks. We soon reach the tomb 
of Abel, where tradition says Cain buried his 
brother after carrying him five hundred years on 
his back. If this cursedness fell on the place for 
such a sin, it seems a fitting location for the clos- 
ing scene of that first murder. 



292 Sights and Insights. 

But how different below. There is an island of 
green in a sea of desert. The wind careers over 
the city in sudden gusts. Here it silvers a mile 
of poplars in an instant ; there it tosses the dark 
green of the English walnut ; yonder it stirs up 
the light green of the olive ; every-where it takes 
away for a moment the vail, and lets the thousand 
silver streams of Abana and Pharpar shimmer in 
the setting sun. On the south is the desert we 
have traveled ; on the east, the deserts of Assyria ; 
on every side, desolation ; at our feet, that emblem 
of Paradise where grow all manner of fruits, and 
the streams of life make glad the city. We turn 
away with a reality to put alongside of John's pict- 
ure, and heaven will be more real, if possible, for 
the vision. 

Two vast ranges of mountains, whose passes are 
nearly as high, and peaks much higher than Mount 
Washington, lie between us and the sea. The 
valley of Coele-Syria lies between them. We 
now assault the first range, the Anti-Lebanon. 
Our tents had moved on hours before. The guide 
and master of horse were with us. After a couple 
of hours of the worst scrambling we had seen we 
condescended to take the road. Before night the 
winds, that had played over Damascus and painted 
pictures for us, roared and raged at us. Once 



Our Last Ride in Syria. 293 

believe ^Eolus to be a god, and no one would dare 
attempt these heights in the face of such beating 
defiance. Rain was soon added ; but we took our 
gum-coats from the saddle-bow, our shawls from 
the seat, and defied the blast. But at length it 
grew so fierce that the rain cut the face like small 
hail. We could scarcely sit upon our horses ; 
they could hardly be compelled to face it. Every 
few minutes they would wheel round to avoid its 
fury. After two hours of breasting the cold tem- 
pest we found a little shelter, and very little it 
was. After a trifling abatement we pushed on to 
our tents, and spent the evening in speculating on 
the weakness of tent-ropes and the strength of 
wind. In the morning the peaks about us glittered 
with abundant snow — a decided change from nine- 
ty-six degrees in the shade, where we had panted 
in the sirocco of the desert a few days before. 

We willingly waited for sunshine that morning 
— sunshine that had made such progress toward 
nigritude on our face and hands that we had ceased 
to speculate on how long it would take us to be- 
come as brown as Arabs or black as Nubians, 
and only wondered whether we should ever ap- 
proximate white men again. Yes, we waited for 
it ; welcomed it ; bathed hands and face in its 
warmth ; and, standing amid the glittering peaks 



294 Sights and Insights. 

of a sudden winter, thanked God for the " forces 
of a sunbeam." 

We soon reached the summit. I do not know 
what it is, but there is a perpetual charm about 
mountains. 

" There is an ampler ether, a diviner air." The 
element of variety exists in almost endless devel- 
opment. You scale one pass or peak with infinite 
labor one day, but you are lured irresistibly to 
scale another the next day. Gorges, peaks, pla- 
teaus, precipices, hold and thrill one with a sense 
of sublime power, and make him feel like a Titan, 
able to toss and hurl these mountains in his own 
hands. Then to come down into a valley is like 
a panorama. It is at first too distant to distin- 
guish anything but general features — its vast fields 
of variegated color only blend to make one pict- 
ure ; but hour by hour, as you wind down the 
mountain side, new revelations appear ; you fill 
your majestic outlines with individual beauties, 
and populate it with human life and love. So, for 
hours, we came down into that most beautiful val- 
ley of Central Syria. It vividly called up Hol- 
yoke, Wyoming, Meiringen, and a dozen brain- 
pictures God has given me, to hint what more 
glorious landscapes he can make in a perfect 
world. 



Our Last Ride in Syria. 295 

Far over the plain we saw a single horseman 
galloping toward us. Almost before I realized it 
Rev. Mr. Dale, missionary from Philadelphia to 
Zahleh, had us by the hand. We had telegraphed 
him from Damascus, and he had ridden about ten 
miles to meet us. I was pleased to find him full 
of enthusiasm in his slow work. He has not yet 
learned to speak to those he comes to show the 
way of life, but he calls these people " my natives," 
as if already converted. 

Great success has attended the labor of the 
American Board in Syria. Dr. Thomson has 
been here forty years. They establish schools 
and Churches wherever occasion demands or their 
means permit. They practice the regular Method- 
ist tactics of circuits and an itinerant ministry. 
The slaughters and civil war of i860 so broke the 
spirit of the people that Christianity has been ac- 
cepted much more readily since. " Humility is 
so sweet when pride is impossible." We reluc- 
tantly bade our brother adieu on the road, left him 
alone in that oasis of nature but desert of grace, 
and began an evening climb on the west side of 
the valley whose eastern slope we had descended 
in the morning. We did not pitch camp till quite 
late. We lived among the stars again that night. 

Ne^t morning the horses came out fresh and 

19 



296 Sights and Insights. 

frisky. We were to dip our faces in the sea be- 
foie noon. In an hour we looked out between 
the snowy peaks, and the sea was at our feet. 
The white houses of Beirut gleamed in the dark 
green of fig, orange, palm, and mulberry trees. It 
looked about five miles away, but it was twenty- 
five. Down the slopes of Lebanon, through ter- 
raced vineyards, picturesque scenery, varying 
tints of verdure, as we neared the tropic plain, we 
came with exuberant shout and song, entering 
Beirut about noon. 

I parted from my horse with sincere regret. 
He had carried me four hundred and thirty miles 
without a balk. He never went back on me, as 
he had ample opportunity when going up hills 
that nearly approached the perpendicular, nor 
tossed me over his head in going down. And 
whenever there was a spot half level and smooth 
enough for a little race, and he wanted to dash 
ahead, I never curbed his impetuous spirit, nor 
tried to prevent his evident satisfaction at always 
coming out decidedly ahead. Nay, I ever en- 
couraged him with my good wishes. May he 
always find plentiful provender, and riders in no 
wise averse to his best ambition ! 

Mingled feelings possess me as I now find my 
tour in Palestine a thing of the past — a memory, 



Our Last Ride in Syria. 297 

and not an anticipation. My twenty-one days in 
the saddle have been a most exuberant physical 
life. Suns and storms, mountains and plains, wild 
gorge and terrible desert, have all stood as minis- 
ters of an enthusiasm that never faltered, an in- 
spiration that never was withdrawn. History has 
unrolled its centuries before my eyes. Man's most 
majestic monuments have proclaimed his great- 
ness; their wrecked remains have equally pro- 
claimed its limit. Philosophy has stood by my 
side, announcing but few principles, but silently 
pointing at the pregnant examples that history 
marshals. Nations gather the strength of hoary 
centuries, only to rush to a surer ruin ; vast, un- 
counted hosts shake the plain with their tread at 
evening, but in the morning they are dead men. 
The scenes shift as in a dream, but they change 
what has seemed like dreams and pictures into 
realities. The traces of individuals on three con- 
tinents have changed the almost mythic Alexan- 
ders and Napoleons into ubiquitous Titans, toy- 
ing with the blended powers of individuals, races, 
and empires. These figures of history stalk like 
great Colossi, holding a whole sheaf of scepters, rul- 
ing many empires, treading down individuals, ful- 
filling manifest destiny ; but they stalk the sooner 
off the stage. 



298 Sights and Insights. 

Most of all has the panorama of divine mani- 
festation been unrolled. The holy places of earth 
are pictured in my memory ; places of God's hail- 
ing wrath, of falling fire, of distilling dew, of 
heaven's curtains opening to take in the ascending 
spirit, or to let out a view of its glory — places 
where the touch of finger or thrill of voice upon 
the liquid air have sent warm life under the ribs 
of death ; and especially that place where Death 
exhausted all its power on such fullness of life as 
left an infinite surplus to flow down to all the dy- 
ing sinners of the race. Not only do these pict- 
ures all stand before me, but with almost equal 
delight rises that other place where Divine author- 
ity said, " The hour now is, when the true wor- 
shipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in 
truth." Thus in the very locality of the holy 
places themselves, the glorious doctrine of the 
holiness of every place was announced. Every 
hill is Bethel ; every mountain is Dothan. 



Homeward Bound. 299 



HOMEWARD BOUND. 

NEARING THE PORT. 

The land-breeze comes, a fragrant gale ; 

The watery tinge has left the sky ; 
To-morrow's morning shall unvail 

The land so sought by every eye. 

Below the near horizon's bound 
Are homes our yearning hearts survey, 

Familiar faces, hallowed ground, 
And welcomes worth a year's delay. 

Thus gales breathe hints of heavenly shores ; 

Earth's skies are daily lifted higher ; 
And sunsets seem like opening doors 

To seas of mingled glass and fire. 

Life's journeys close, and friends seem near, 
Long missed, but waiting us in peace ; 

Eternal mansions, welcomes rare, 

God's love, and ceaseless joy's increase. 



THE END. 





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Christianity Tested by Eminent Men, 

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Clarke, Dr. A. % 

Life of. 12mo 150 

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Cromwell, Oliver, 

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Dan Young, 

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Episcopius, 

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Roberts, Bishop, 

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Village Blacksmith, the. 

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Wall 's End Miner, the, 

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Walker, Rev. G. W., 

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Watson, Rev. Richard, 

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Angels, Nature and Ministry of, 

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Home's Introduction to the Bible. 

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Immortality of the Soul, 

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Jesus Christ, His Times, life, and Work, 

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Meditations on the Essence of Christianity, 

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Methodist Episcopal Pulpit. 

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